SCLS Home Marketing & PR Home Search

SCLS Makes Libraries More Effective

SCLS serves to make its member libraries even more effective by:

• helping them share materials so expenditures of thousands of dollars locally become worth millions in services to the general public in a shared environment;
  
  
• providing them with leadership in the areas of technology and telecommunications;
  
  
• providing them with the training and expertise to cope with constantly changing technologies and demands for service.

SCLS Promotes Resource Sharing

Today, the ability to obtain and effectively use information is critical to individual and collective success. Through the South Central Library System, member libraries have access to:

• shared digital content like downloadable audiobooks and ebooks.
  
  
• contracts for library resources because individual libraries can’t afford to pay for everything customers need.
  
  
• cooperative management services that coordinate orders and shipping for everything from library cards to puppets to computers, thus saving money. SCLS manages county library budgets on request and cooperative projects on behalf of member libraries (for example, the e-book consortium and LINKcat project), and it represents member libraries in statewide forums on interlibrary loan, delivery, reference, and technology.
  
  
• circulation/interlibrary loan services through the LINKcat integrated library system (ILS) that makes the resources of 42 major public libraries in the system area readily available to all area residents. More than 54 percent of the system’s 802,319 residents have LINKcat library cards, and more than 12.2 million books (and other library materials) were checked out in 2010 by area residents from our LINKcat libraries. Other SCLS member libraries (including Marshfield and Portage County) circulated nearly 1.3 million items, bringing the 2010 total to more than 13.5 million. At a conservative estimate of $20 per book, (averaging in the price of everything from paperbacks to reference books) this direct traffic represents $270 million in value to patrons for this service alone because they can borrow books instead of purchasing them.
  
  
• technology services like Harriet, the automated library voice that contacts customers by telephone when their books are available, saved member libraries more than $163,000 in postage and printing costs last year. SCLS also funds and maintains central Internet access and e-mail for member libraries; portable wireless computer labs for classes and training; online continuing education programs that save time and mileage; conducts experiments in new technologies leading to innovations like a public computer reservation system; and provides computer support services.
  
  
• world-class delivery service is essential to resource sharing. In 2011, our red truck delivery service carried 12.8 million items among SCLS member libraries making nearly 34,000 stops over a distance of 373,000 miles. At a total cost of $875,000 in 2011, and the cost to send an item from one library to another within SCLS is only 14 cents. Volume has increased 73 percent between 2001 and 2010.

SCLS Provides Professional Consultants & Quality Continuing Education Programs

• More than 746 members from all types of libraries attended 41 continuing education programs SCLS produced last year. Of these, 27 were webinars that were recorded and made available online, and were viewed 2,199 times.
  
  
• SCLS helps member libraries develop programs that serve children, young adults and families, and finds ways to create library programs that foster a culture of literacy. The system also helps sponsor the Summer Library Program (SLP), which last year again involved more than 25,000 children system wide.
  
  
• SCLS staff members are available to help libraries that are constructing a new building or renovating an old facility.

[pdf version]

For more information about marketing and public relations, contact Mark Ibach.

SCLS Home | Marketing & PR Home