Eager to get your hands on a hot new book, but discouraged by high prices, and long waiting lists at the library? The King County Library System’s Selection and Order Department—those wonderful folks who manage the library’s collection—launched an alternative that might be just the answer you’re looking for: The Lucky Day collection.
This new collection is a creative way to get high-demand materials into readers’ hands faster. In addition to the traditional holds waiting lists, where patrons sign up in a virtual line to check out popular books as soon as they are returned, Lucky Day titles of the same books are available for direct checkout from Choice Reads and Lucky Day shelves at five community library locations: Federal Way 320th, Covington, Kingsgate, Renton, and Sammamish.
The high-demand titles may not always be available, but each copy checked out will be back within two weeks, so readers can check back regularly and have a chance to find a copy before someone else checks it out.
These five pilot sites were selected for strategic reasons, according to KCLS Selection & Order Manager, Nancy Henkel.
“We chose a library in each of the general geographic areas: Kingsgate in the north, Federal Way 320th in the southwest, Covington in the southeast, Renton in the middle, and Sammamish in the east,” she said in a press release.
Like Goldilocks’s strategy in her unauthorized visit to the Three Bears, CMS selected pilot sites because they were “just right.”
“We stayed away from sites that were too big, too small, too remote, or too busy,” Henkel said. “We want to track our results, so we selected libraries that are comparable: mid-range in size and collection, with enough on-site traffic and circulation to sustain and measure use.”
Before the Lucky Day pilot project, all copies of the most popular titles purchased were added to the catalogued collection to accommodate eager readers waiting in the holds queue. Now, additional copies of new titles go to the pilot library shelves for on-site circulation, and are not available for holds. If you spot your coveted book on the Lucky Day shelves, you can grab it and check it out immediately, for two weeks, without renewals.
If you’re lucky enough to find more than one of your special titles on the shelves, you’ll have to prioritize: you can only check out two Lucky Day items at a time. The holds queue is the same as always: check out your book through the holds list, and you’ll have it for 28 days. However: If you’re in the holds queue, spot the title in the library and check it out, your hold is automatically canceled. To place a new hold, you’ll start all over, at the end of the line.
How it works
The Lucky Day collection will include current hardcover adult fiction and nonfiction titles with long holds lists. Books in the collection will have a green wrap-around sticker on them, making them clearly part of the Lucky Day collection. Shelf signs will also point to the special collection.
Each of the five participating libraries will have staff in charge of monitoring the Lucky Day stock. Selection and Order will regularly order new books for the collection, and will provide pilot site staff with a list of new items added. When the demand for selected titles slacks off, volumes removed from Lucky Day will be added back into the regular collection.
To test your good reader’s fortune, visit Federal Way 320th, Covington, Kingsgate, Renton, or Sammamish library, and look for Lucky Day books sharing shelf space with Choice Reads. It just might be your lucky day!
