News

BOBBY helps students borrow books

(14 November 2002)

The University of Durham, Queen's Campus welcomes a new member to its library staff for the start of term. BOBBY (Borrow Books by Yourself) has been on trial with the library team over the past year and is now a fully-fledged team member.

Affectionately named BOBBY by library staff, the self-serve machine has been assisting staff by allowing students to borrow their books themselves through a self-check machine.

The table mounted machine scans the library card and books a student wishes to borrow, a receipt is then issued detailing when each book is due to be returned. BOBBY automatically picks up any problems with a borrower's library record and will display a warning message.

The Information Resources Centre at the Queen's Campus is a busy department providing students with varied resources for their studies. BOBBY has enabled staff to spend more time dealing with students queries.

Campus Librarian, Christine Purcell commented, "During the trial run we simply told the students that BOBBY was the normal way that we issued books, this helped to increase the percentage of users. We still have staff on hand to provide support but they have more time to deal with requests. BOBBY has exceeded all our expectations."

A trial run of the self-serve system has been extremely successful peaking at 50% of all issues. BOBBY currently handles an average of 44.9% of the items issued by the library each week.

It's a healthy start to the new academic year with nearly 700 students admitted to the Queen's Campus. Taking the total to over 1,700 full time students.