Staff and patrons have commented that they would like to be able to try out the variety of new electronic devices that are available before investing in them. This new lending library will give patrons the chance to do so. One of the challenges has been to learn what types of items lend themselves to being circulating items: do they require a lot of management on the part of staff or does the device require the library to subscribe to specific services in order to function? A challenge for staff has been to accept that items may be damaged or checkout and never returned just like any other item - and to not place additional barriers to patrons to check items out.

Our IT supervisor was given authority to purchase about 60 items so that we could actually handle and figure how to manage them. One of the most critical process steps is the ongoing process of determining which items are appropriate for the collection. The part of the project that has been most fun and rewarding is the enthusiasm of the staff to try something new and their willingness to implement this as a pilot project knowing that we will need to make changes along the way and that it's OK if we make mistakes.

We will have the first items available for patrons during National Library Week (April of 2015). We hope to learn which items are most popular with our patrons and also how they use them - for work, leisure, just because they are curious. We hope to use what we learn to leverage grant funding that will allow us to expand the project to all three of our locations. For our organization we hope to learn what makes new services/projects successful as we continue to try new things.