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Brooklyn Public Library exec director Dionne Mack-Harvin eyes Netflix

The august academic journal of record for New York City, the New York Post, reports that Brooklyn Public is looking at using Netflix to deliver materials. This excerpt from the Brooklyn Record blog:

Dionne Mack-Harvin was recently named executive director of Brooklyn's library system, and one of her first new initiative is to develop a home-delivery system so patrons could obtain books and other materials without having to visit one of the library's 60 branches. The library is reaching out to Netflix to serve as a provider of DVDs and videos. "What we want to do is work with Netflix and really get that inventory together, really use Netflix as the delivery mechanism," said John Vitali, the library's chief fiscal officer. "We're getting some good vibrations back. Nothing formal has been settled."

Mack-Harvin's initiatives go beyond home delivery - this from Only The Blog Knows Brooklyn and New York 1:

For the first time in the city's history, an African-American woman was appointed as the head of a major public library system Thursday. Dionne Mack-Harvin will serve as executive director of the Brooklyn Public Library, the fifth largest system in the country. She was voted in unanimously by the board of trustees earlier this week. "I have to tell you Dionne earned her position the old fashioned way: she earned it, very, very simple," said Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz. “My vision for Brooklyn Public Library is that every Brooklyn library will be the center of the community,” said Mack-Harvin. “We will increase access so that the library doors are open at all 60 of our locations when they should be." Mack-Harvin started her career as a librarian at the Crown Heights branch more than a decade ago.

More on the official Mack-Harvin appointment announcement from the NYC Mayor's office.

Dionne received her Master of Arts in Africana Studies from the State University of New York (SUNY) at Albany in 1995 and her Masters of Library Science in Information Science from the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy at SUNY Albany in 1996. She graduated magna cum laude from SUNY at Brockport in 1994 with a Bachelors of Science in History and African and Afro-American Studies.

Netflix for library books at the Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library

David Lee King writes in his article The Missing Piece of the Library Netflix Model

Previously, I have posted a little about Netflix and how libraries could use the model in a similar way (mainly riffing off Michael Porter’s great posts about Netflix). And then I switched jobs.

And guess what? In my first two weeks at Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library, I kept hearing things about mailings. And holds. And mailing holds. It finally clicked, and I asked “wait a sec. You mean we mail stuff to patrons?”

Can you guess what the answer was? Yes indeedy, we do in fact mail ALL HOLDS to patrons. That means books, videos, and music - whatever was requested. Since the 1970’s. And we budget for it, too. This year’s budget (ending in Dec) had $360,000 earmarked for mailing reserve items to patrons, and we’re increasing it in our 2007 budget (US mailing rates went up).

Why in the world do we do this? Because our patrons absolutely love the service. In fact, Gina Millsap, our director, has spoken with patrons who have stated “this is one of the most important” library services and have also said that if we didn’t have this service, they’d “just use Amazon.”

The Topeka & Shawnee County Library was recently ranked #1 in the Kansas library rankings. This ABC News feature (Quicktime required for video) has a quote from a patron about the books by mail service:

More than 91,000 lovers of books, cds and movies have borrowed from the Topeka Shawnee County Public Library so far this year. Among those checking out the library on a regular basis is Sarah Wheeler. She says the best part is the extra attention she gets when she walks through the door. [...]

Wheeler says her favorite part is known as the Red Carpet section. It's where people with special needs come to find specialty items such as books with large print. Wheeler has problems with her vision and has had a number of health problems. When she was unable to make it to the library, she had her books delivered to her home.

"That was incredible when I was using that," says Wheeler. "What is really phenomenal is that you can get books mailed to your home."

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