Have you ever found yourself awake at night wondering how much shelving is in the library? Across all of the 29 branches? No?
Well, we did. The answer: 9.52 miles of shelving. That's a lot of books! Around 575,000 books, DVDs, audiobooks, and other physical items, to be exact.
Managing more than half a million items on miles of shelving in a library system that covers about 7,000 square miles is no simple task. So, how do we do it?
Millions of Item Movements, Miles of Shelves
A big challenge that comes with managing any library collection is that things don’t stay put. Materials are moving constantly. Books are checked out. Returned. Placed on hold. New materials are purchased. Other items wear out or are no longer used. At TRL, a book you return to Olympia today may end up in Ocean Park next week, and across the district in Packwood next month.
The logistics of managing all these moving items is complicated, and large library systems like ours have tackled the challenge in multiple ways. One strategy is to keep items assigned to one library so that no matter where they are returned, they always make it back to the same place. This method is more predictable but can lead to library collections feeling a bit stale. The opposite strategy is to “float” the collection, where items do not have an assigned location and stay at the library where they are returned. This keeps the shelves fresh organically as items move around through holds requests and returns, but it can also mean that a library ends up with too much, or too little of a certain topic or genre.
Because we strive to offer a collection that serves the wide range of interests in our communities, TRL has gradually moved from a (somewhat) static collection to a partially floating collection, to a mostly floating collection to help keep each library’s shelves stocked with fresh material.
To do this effectively, staff must adjust sections that become too full or too sparse, choose where to distribute newly acquired items, and evaluate items that are worn out or no longer in use, making decisions about what to retain. In the past, all these adjustments and decisions had to be made manually, and with so many materials and libraries there was a lot of room for improvement.
Laying the Groundwork: Improved Productivity Through Technology
In 2020, TRL began working to improve how material is handled to address the challenges that come with a floating collection and to increase our efficiency. We started by adding new RFID (radio frequency id) tags to every item in the collection. Although we still use scannable barcodes, the addition of RFID tags that can be read from any direction enabled the next upgrade – automated materials handing (AMH) sorters. These machines, located at our administrative headquarters and a couple of our busiest libraries, help our hard-working staff scan and sort up to 1,000 items per hour.
A bit later, new check out stations improved the borrowing process by scanning multiple stacked items at once, thanks to the new tags. And in 2025, we upgraded to stations that are more user friendly and can be used for a variety of functions including catalog searches and in-branch advertisements.
Once we laid the groundwork, we could begin the implementation of a new system to manage the hundreds of thousands of items in the collection more effectively. Created by Lyngsoe Systems in 2010, the Intelligent Materials Management System (IMMS), came about through a partnership with the Aarhus Public libraries in Denmark. Seeking a solution that would allow the collection to float, without the drawbacks of having material pool in some locations or empty others, along with other improvements like eliminating the need to print paper lists of requests, they worked with Lyngsoe Systems to develop the solution to better manage the library collection. It is a solution adopted around the world by libraries seeking the same benefits. In the US, Sacramento Public Library, Arapahoe Libraries, Multnomah County Library, and Timberland Regional Library have implemented IMMS.
How IMMS Helps
That 9.5 miles of shelving mentioned earlier - we know that because staff mapped all of the shelves. How many, how wide, and what collections are on the shelves. All of that information is utilized by IMMS to help manage the collections.
Here’s what happens:
When an item is returned, the library’s catalog software checks with IMMS to find out where the item should go. If we’ve checked in a mystery novel at Olympia, for example, IMMS goes through an evaluation of the various factors:
- Do any patrons have a hold on the item?
- Is the item needed for a display somewhere?
- What is the width of the item itself (estimated based on page count and standard page/cover widths when possible, or an average width for that type of material)?
- How much shelf space is available at the section where that item would be shelved in Olympia?
- How much shelf space is available where it would be shelved at every other library?
- How many copies of the title are already available at each library?
- Any additional parameters that may also apply to the specific item.
IMMS evaluates the factors in the instant the item is scanned and tells the catalog software where the item is going. That could be a shelving cart where it was returned, if that’s the best match, or another location. It could also assign the item to our ‘media hotel’ at TRL headquarters, where items can be quickly pulled to send out to locations as needed. As a result, items can end up not only on the shelf at the library where they were returned, but where they best fit, all controlled by parameters set by library staff.
Better Tools for Healthier Collections
In addition to making sure items get to the library where they will be most likely to be discovered and borrowed, IMMS provides TRL staff with many more tools to help efficiently manage the collection.
For example, books that have not been checked out at one library can be automatically moved to another library to give them another chance of being discovered. Overall, this can help reduce the number of items removed from the collection due to lack of use alone. Processing and displaying new items, retrieving items patrons have placed on hold, and performing inventory are additional examples of areas where IMMS has a positive impact by reducing repetitive handling and getting items where they need to go quicker.
What IMMS is Not
New technologies often give rise to questions and public skepticism, and IMMS is no different. Let’s take a moment to clear up a couple misconceptions we know are on some community members’ minds.
First, IMMS is not A.I. Though definitions of artificial intelligence vary, IMMS is not a learning model. In practice, it follows a simple flow chart—an algorithm to determine where to send items. Which libraries have space? Which already have copies? Do they have too many copies? At each stage it is a simple yes/no question, ultimately reaching the answer of where the item is assigned. We set the governing parameters. We control when things are marked for new display, weeded due to age and use, and any other criteria we want to use to manage the collection. IMMS provides parameters at the system, branch, and individual shelf level to enable us to quickly and efficiently manage all of these items.
Second, IMMS is not designed as a staff surveillance tool. The focus of the software is on managing the efficient flow of material through the system. The data collected provides us with information about collection performance including how long it takes for items to get from the sorter at the main Service Center to a library shelf, how many items are added to a shelf, and which shelves in each library have space. Reports provide information to supervisors regarding the types and volume of work, and this helps us understand workload and provide clear minimum expectations. Like most workplace software, user actions on the system are logged for security and to resolve issues that arise. In this way, IMMS is no different than knowing who received a payment for copies, or whose key card was used to access staff-only spaces.
Why Efficiency Matters
So far, we’ve looked at how IMMS and related technologies help us effectively manage our collections so that every library across the district, rural and urban, has shelves that are kept well-stocked (but not overstuffed) with fresh items that align with the interests of the local community. These are important goals all by themselves, but certainly not the full story. By streamlining collection management processes, we can not only create more appealing collections, but also free library staff to answer questions, recommend material, assist with technology, and countless other tasks that require staff time and attention. Technologies like IMMS play an important role helping us balance limited resources to provide the best possible library experience for the public we serve now and in the future.
