The three libraries are combining their collections -- totaling almost 1 million books, DVDs and CDs -- and making them readily available to patrons of all three libraries.
View full sizeA toddler looks at a book during a recent sale at the Easton Area Public Library. The Allentown, Bethlehem and Easton libraries will be sharing their collections starting today. Starting today, the Allentown, Bethlehem and Easton libraries will all offer almost 1 million books, DVDs and CDs.
They’re calling it the Lehigh Valley Library System and billing it as quicker, cheaper alternative to inter-library loans.
Allentown, Bethlehem and Easton library patrons have long been able to request any item available in Pennsylvania libraries through the interlibrary loan program, but those requests often take days and even weeks as the items are sent through the mail, said Jennifer Stocker, Easton’s library director.
Under the Lehigh Valley Library System, items available at the Allentown, Bethlehem and Easton libraries will be sent among the libraries within 24 hours, Stocker said.
“If you’re reading the Harry Potter series and you’re on book two and Easton doesn’t have it but Bethlehem does, you can have it tomorrow,” Stocker said.
The service will cost the same as using interlibrary loan: 50 cents per item. The libraries got a grant to cover the cost of the $22,500 van that will be used to transport the items and are sharing the staffing and gas costs.
Bethlehem Area Public Library Executive Director Janet Fricker is a former librarian in the Bucks County Free Library System, where items were shared this way throughout the county’s 18 libraries. She said the system worked very well and was able to provide so many more materials to patrons.
“It’s like tripling the size of the collection for a patron,” Fricker said of the Lehigh Valley Library System.
The librarians say the new program will be especially helpful to patrons looking to read an entire author’s collection or looking for a rare book that only one of the libraries may have. The service also will assist school students assigned the same books or research topics, they said.
Some Easton students, for example, were recently assigned research projects on World War II airplanes, and Easton only had a limited collection of books on the topic, Stocker said.
“We only have a handful of items, but Bethlehem and Allentown have more,” she said. “We can bring them here and let students use them.”
The shared catalogs will be available online, so patrons can make their requests from their homes or at the libraries. The shared items will be available for pickup the next day — Monday through Friday — at their home libraries.
The Allentown, Bethlehem and Easton libraries may invite the other Lehigh Valley libraries to share collections if the service goes well, the librarians said. One challenge is Allentown, Bethlehem and Easton all share the same online catalog software where the other libraries may not, Fricker said.
The libraries also see the shared catalogs as a launching point for other joint ventures.
“We hope it’s the beginning of collaboration where we can start sharing resources and saving dollars down the road,” Fricker said. “What it’s doing is showing that three quasi-government entities in three different cities and two different counties can cooperate.”