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Library Offering "gpsr" for checkout


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We recently placed a cache at our local library, and really planted the caching bug in the head librarian. She is very community oriented, and has done too many things to mention for a small town, with not alot for the kids to do. She shares our love of local history, (almost half our "Hides" involve some sort of historical landmark or site). She has also put us in touch with our local town historian, who we hope to work with creating a Wherigo adventure based on the many historical sites in our town.

 

But she outdid her self last week in the community newspaper. She announced the library has obtained atleast one GPSR, which is now available for checkout with a library card.

 

Just curious if anyone else has this sort of option at their local library? Im thinking she may very well be the first to offer such a unique opportunity.

 

Also to put the idea out there for those of you involved with your library. What a great idea to get people involved with both geocaching and the outdoors. You can find them for donation in the most unlikely places too! While making my weekly run to the town landfill last week, I was telling a friend who works for the town and runs the landfill about her idea, and he says "yeah! i got one too, someone was throwing one out last week and put it in the take it or leave it pile"

 

One man gathers, What another man spills.

 

Happy trails.

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That is cool, never heard of anything like that! They should do something where if you check out Geocaching for Dummies or The Complete Idiots Guide to Geocaching, the GPSr checkout is included automatically!

 

The library where I work has three GPS units available for checkout (a Garmin 76Csx, a Garmin 60Cs, and other model I can't recall). There is also a local GIS organization that frequently holds their meetings in our library and there have been a couple of them which featured geocaching (I gave a talk at one of them).

 

I know of one cache in a library whiich requires you to obtain digits for a library call number from objects nearby (the number of windows in the building across the street...the last digit of the phone number...). The call number leads you to a "fake book" that's sitting on the shelves right next to "The Complete Idiots Guide to Geocaching".

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The Grey-Bruce libraries in Ontario offer geocaching kits that can be signed out:

 

http://www.brucegreytrails.com/trailnews_full.php?NewsID=61

 

http://www.publichealthgreybruce.on.ca/Hom..._Geocaching.htm

 

The kit includes:

1. Fact Sheet – Try Geocaching to Find Treasures in Grey and Bruce Counties.

2. “Geocaching for Dummies”, by Joel McNamara, 2004.

3. CD “The Complete Guide to Geocaching” by Seth Leary, 2004.

4. Garmin GPS unit

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Just curious how these libraries manage the devices from a circulation standpoint. Is there a deposit required for checkout or just normal lending practices. Time limit on how long a unit can stay out? Any additional fees for damage, etc..?

 

This is something I would like to pursue in my community however guaranteeing that the unit(s) make it back to the library is my key concern. If a unit doesn't come back it could be like getting blood from a turnip to try and collect a replacement for lost/damaged/stolen units.

 

Thanks,

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... But she outdid her self last week in the community newspaper. She announced the library has obtained atleast one GPSR, which is now available for checkout with a library card.

 

Just curious if anyone else has this sort of option at their local library? Im thinking she may very well be the first to offer such a unique opportunity....

 

Well done. Small libraries often work hard to serve their communities. I see some potential for the next time I upgrade my GPS on what to do with the old one. Since the maps are now one GPS only I can even donate it with full auto routing.

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The Grey-Bruce libraries in Ontario offer geocaching kits that can be signed out:

 

http://www.brucegreytrails.com/trailnews_full.php?NewsID=61

 

http://www.publichealthgreybruce.on.ca/Hom..._Geocaching.htm

 

The kit includes:

1. Fact Sheet – Try Geocaching to Find Treasures in Grey and Bruce Counties.

2. “Geocaching for Dummies”, by Joel McNamara, 2004.

3. CD “The Complete Guide to Geocaching” by Seth Leary, 2004.

4. Garmin GPS unit

 

I'm on the library board in the Town of Blue Mountains in Grey County. These "Geocaching Kits" have been extremely popular! There's been a waiting list of the kits ever since they were introduced last year. These kits are checked out like other materials/books. All you need is a library card. I've also donated a slew of other geocaching books for patrons who want further info. Mny members of our community have had their start geocaching with these kits!

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Nice to hear others are doing this. We had no clue. Oh and if anyone out there has some "older" gpsr's sitting in a drawer the Merrick Public Library in Brookfield mass only has the one currently! :unsure:

 

I think i will print up a sheet with the local caches on it too for her to hand out. Alot of times the computers are chock full of kiddies. Also it is the hardest part of the hobbie to get into for the senior crowd im sure.

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I think i will print up a sheet with the local caches on it too for her to hand out. Alot of times the computers are chock full of kiddies. Also it is the hardest part of the hobbie to get into for the senior crowd im sure.

I think it would be nice to ask the cache owners for permission first before doing so. You could also make it easier by loading them into the GPSr.

 

A GPSr is not exactly one of the easiest thing in the world to operate. Considering many people are challenged by their VCR, perhaps a cheat sheet would be useful as well.

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Just curious how these libraries manage the devices from a circulation standpoint. Is there a deposit required for checkout or just normal lending practices. Time limit on how long a unit can stay out? Any additional fees for damage, etc..?

 

This is something I would like to pursue in my community however guaranteeing that the unit(s) make it back to the library is my key concern. If a unit doesn't come back it could be like getting blood from a turnip to try and collect a replacement for lost/damaged/stolen units.

 

Thanks,

 

Since this is just one piece of something I've been spending a lot of time working on lately I can answer your questions, at least in terms of how our library handles it.

 

All of our pieces of equipment that can be checked out, which includes items such as GPS devices, digital cameras, wireless microphones (for presentations), and a large collection of laptops are all cataloged using our online catalog system. We also catalog student study rooms and several meeting rooms which can be reserved and used for a variety of purpose including small conferences, video conferencing, training workshops, etc. By cataloging the items fields which determining how long the item can be checked out can be set. There are no additional fees or deposits required but I don't know what the policy is on damage. All of these items simply have a barcode tag attached (in the case of rooms, it's on the key) so the workflow for checking in/out the items is identical to the process for checking out/in a book.

 

Rather than force patrons to go to the online catalog for availability of equipment and rooms (generalized as "Library Assets") I have developed a suite of services which integrate with the online catalog. It will produce output in multiple formats which allows us to have a page on our library website (separate from the catalog) for these items as well as a large flatpanel display which sits near our circulation desk. That way a patron that wants to check out a laptop or use a study room merely needs to look at the monitor to see what is available.

 

As I said, the equipment and rooms service is just one of a suite of services. Other also include a library hours service, a staff directory service, a course reserve item service, an events services, and a couple of others. That way, someone that want's to reserve a GPS, for say, next weekend will know that they can't check it out on 9:00pm Friday night, because the equipment reservation can talk to the library hours service, which will tell it that the library is closed at 8:00PM (not really, but that's an example).

 

A couple of things I'll be working on in the future is an integration with an external Enterprise Notification Service (I was one of the developers on that as well) so that one could check the Kiosk and see that all of the laptops are currently checked out, but one will become available in two hours. They could then go to a page to reserved a laptop, and when one is checked in, the equipment service would used to notification service to send a text message to the patron to let them know their equipment is available.

 

Since we also have 20 unit libraries on campus, and all of the services are generalized to work with any of the libraries, if a GPS was not available in our unit library it could tell a patron the closest library (all library locations are geocoded) where one is available.

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All sounds really nice. Preloaded caches, fact sheets and tech guides to get folks started. I can see the popularity factor and believe the same would apply here. I could see it helping to get more folks interested in our area. I have an old Legend that I could donate but fear that heavy tree cover could discourage new users so I think I'm leaning toward eTrex H models.

 

I'm still struggling with the potential for a 'kit' to not get returned and fear a sudden end to such a nice program in such a case (considering tight funding these days). I'm going to have to talk to our local director. They may have some better insight to what the level of awol materials is for our library and also on whether she would see it as feasible. There is an employee there that's a big techie so he would be a good resource.

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All sounds really nice. Preloaded caches, fact sheets and tech guides to get folks started. I can see the popularity factor and believe the same would apply here. I could see it helping to get more folks interested in our area. I have an old Legend that I could donate but fear that heavy tree cover could discourage new users so I think I'm leaning toward eTrex H models.

 

I'm still struggling with the potential for a 'kit' to not get returned and fear a sudden end to such a nice program in such a case (considering tight funding these days). I'm going to have to talk to our local director. They may have some better insight to what the level of awol materials is for our library and also on whether she would see it as feasible. There is an employee there that's a big techie so he would be a good resource.

 

Sounds like a job for GeoMate Jr! ("look, up in the sky.. its a Garmin! No, its a DeLorme!! NO!! It's a GeoMate Jr!!!") If I recall, the unit has a reset function that will flag all of the preloads as Not Found, right?

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