Deliver me from OCPL

As you may or may not know, the Skaneateles Library has very recently become an official member of the Onondaga County Public Library System! They are applying for their charter to become an official New York State Public Library, and in preparation for that application process, they negotiated with OCPL to become a member of our organization. This means they make the 32nd library to join our county-wide system.

Lately, the DeWitt Community Library has become the second busiest library in the county, and you can see evidence of this just by looking at how much we receive and send in our daily library delivery. Have you ever placed a reserve on an item and wondered just exactly how that item makes its way from its home library into your hands? Well, every morning libraries print out a daily holds list that tells us titles and shelf locations for items that have been placed on hold by patrons all over the county. We go to the shelves and pull these items, then check them in and print out a slip that lets us know where to send them. We sort the items into various bins and bags based on their ultimate destination. Then all items are picked up by a delivery van which carries them to Central Library to be sorted. Once the items are sorted and tagged for individual libraries, they are picked up by that same delivery van and carried to their respective libraries. This is the reason why items can sometimes take a week or more between "Shipped" status and "Held" status, so be patient! These days, we are working overtime to fulfill all your wildest book dreams!

As you can see from the photos below, our delivery has definitely increased. The first picture is of a delivery man bringing us a few bags back in the 1980s. Fast forward to 2009, and you will see that the amount of delivery we receive and put out takes the delivery van driver two or three trips to complete on average! There are also photos of the very first delivery slip we printed for Skaneateles Library. So now you know the story of the OCPL delivery system.

Click on the photos for full-size versions.