Going Beyond Loaning Books to Loaning Technologies: A Practical Guide for Librarians

This book has the simple theme that many libraries are now loaning technologies to customers so there is a need to establish some sort of guide to best practice. This, therefore, is a manual on the whole process of loaning technologies, from investigating the need through to evaluating the programme. The range of technologies considered for inclusion in a lending programme covers nearly everything electronic that can be carried: calculators, headphones, e-readers, laptops and tablets and even gaming devices. The book is aimed at all librarians, though it is primarily academic librarians who will find the content most relevant, and that includes school libraries.

After an initial chapter, the book gets going with Chapter 2 on identifying need. This is well worth it because before you know the solution you have to identify the problem, and this chapter gives guidance on how to assess the need for a loanable technology programme. Throughout the book, there are several “textboxes” that feature a wide range of extra content, such as useful websites, and in this chapter, one such textbox has suggestions for questions to ask in surveys and focus groups. I suspect that readers will think of other questions to ask in addition. The next chapter describes the wide range of technologies available and whether they are suitable for “in-library” use only or could be loaned for out-of-library use. Because such technology is now fairly familiar to most librarians, some of this may seem redundant, but the range is so wide that there is bound to be some technology not known in such detail, and in my case, it was cameras and video equipment.

There follows a chapter on budgeting, which gives sound advice on how to spread the costs of this sort of programme over several years, and makes the interesting point that the biggest “hidden” cost is very likely to be the packaging of the equipment to keep it safe while on loan. The next chapter is on how to catalogue equipment, with a guide to creating a MARC format for a piece of equipment. After that comes a chapter devoted to the types of packaging to use, how to label items, keep a record of everything in a package and how to store the equipment. The chapter on writing policies makes a few very good points that the library must distinguish between academic and personal use and how to deal with privacy, e.g. wiping the memory of every device before it is used again. Chapters on circulation and related matters such as renewal, are all practical and necessary for librarians wishing to commence this sort of programme.

The final chapter on assessing the success (or otherwise) of the programme wraps up the book nicely, though just how to evaluate the impact of a library programme on student learning is very hard to do and this chapter offers just a few simple measures. There are two appendices, the first on the loanable technology programme at the Undergraduate Library of the University of Illinois, and the second provides some samples of surveys. There is a useful index. This book is a solid manual for anyone who wishes to start a loanable technology programme.