New library packed with state-of-the-art technology.
MINNEAPOLIS – It was biting cold in Minneapolis on Feb. 17, the day the city’s public library IT staff moved their gear from a temporary site to the new, high-tech library downtown.
“The day started out at minus 15 at my house and the wind chill was about minus 35,” recalls Sharon Kinsmith, manager of systems and telecommunications for the Minneapolis Public Library. “We had to put everything in a very bouncy truck and move it to the new building in that temperature.”
The only casualty was a small server that ran the library’s touch-tone renewal system, which lets patrons renew books over the phone. When Kinsmith extracted the phone board from the dead server, she found it wasn’t compatible with any of the library’s newer equipment. So her team got industrious. “One of my staff had an old computer sitting in his garage. He brought it in and got the board to work on it.”
Fortunately no other impromptu repairs were required. The rest of the gear survived the move to the new library, which is set to open on May 20. The 353,000-square-foot building is the flagship of the city’s 15-site public library system. Designed by architect Cesar Pelli, it has a five-story glass atrium topped by a prominent wing-like extension that juts out beyond the roofline and over two city streets.
Inside, the $125 million library is laced with technologies to make the city’s physical and digital assets accessible to patrons. There are 300 desktops and 16 laptops for public use, and wireless Internet access is available throughout the building. Electronic signage and maps are linked to the library’s digital catalog to show the locations of items.
Eight self-checkout units let patrons check out books on their own. There’s also a book-sorting system from FKI Logistex that does a lot of the heavy lifting for library staff – a group made smaller in recent years because of budget constraints. Akin to sorting systems used in retail distribution centers, the bookhandler reads bar codes and routes books along conveyor belts to the proper bin or pushcart, depending on whether a book is destined for in-house shelving or shipment to one of the other city libraries.
“The sorting system is able to sort 6,000 items in an hour. I just say that number and think, yippee!” says Betsy Williams, director of collection and technical services.
New building, new network
Getting into the new facility required the library’s IT staff to move their data center twice – first to a temporary site in 2002, then into the new building. But the effort was worth it: Construction of the new building provided an opportunity to upgrade the telecom infrastructure that serves the city’s entire public library system. There’s a new network, along with a new IP phone system.
“When you open a new building like this, there’s a lot of anticipation. People haven’t had access to a good chunk of the collection for more than three years, and expectations are high. We realized if we’re going to have a state-of-the-art building, we need to have state-of-the-art infrastructure,” Williams says.
A 10Mbps fiber WAN links the central library and 14 branches, replacing 1.5Mbps T-1 connections among the facilities. At the new central library, a 10Mbps connection to the Internet replaces three T-1s. “The new WAN is something our staff and patrons greatly appreciate out in the branches, where it could take 20 to 30 minutes for a staff computer to log on the old network,” Kinsmith says.
In all the city’s public libraries, voice calls are now routed over the fiber WAN to IP phones. The backbone is Mitel Networks’ 3300 IP Communications Platform, an IP PBX with unified messaging, auto-attendant and automatic call distribution features.
One of the benefits of the IP phones is their portability, Kinsmith says. A staff member relocating to a new office takes the phone to a different desk, plugs it in, and the system recognizes the user’s new location.
Staff in the central library have a new way to stay connected when they’re away from their desks. A hands-free voice system from Vocera Communications operates on the library’s wireless network and lets staff send and receive calls, text messages and alerts. With the Vocera devices – which weigh less than 2 ounces and hang from lanyards – users can contact individuals or broadcast messages to predefined groups. They can use voice commands to initiate a call, such as “Call Tom Smith.”
The Vocera system supports the library’s efforts to bring staff and patrons closer. Librarians remain connected with each other, even when they’re scattered among five floors and 2.4 million books. “We’re trying to interact with our patrons by spending more time away from the desk and out in the building, helping people,” Kinsmith says.
Rolling with the punch list
The Vocera system wasn’t part of the original building plans – nor was the 802.11b network it uses. In the early planning stages for the new library, IT staff envisioned a limited zone for wireless Internet access. But as the building design evolved, so did users’ wireless expectations, Williams says. The result is buildingwide wireless access for staff and public. In addition, there are plans to outfit all the libraries in the city system with wireless networks by year-end.
IT staff had to deal with another unexpected requirement: Providing bandwidth and data center space for building systems. “One of the things my staff and I discovered as we made plans to move into this building is how much of the building controls are wireless and how many of them are using our network,” Kinsmith says.
For example, the thermostats are wireless, and the application that controls the building’s window shades runs on a server, she says. “This building is controlled by computers, and those computers need to be on the network somehow.”
Even as construction neared completion, the surprises kept coming. Two months before the building was due to open, Kinsmith and Williams learned about another system – wireless docks for iPods in the teen center – only after it was written up in the local Star Tribune newspaper.
The pair takes these surprises in stride, laughing about how a newspaper reporter knew about the library’s plans to purchase the iPod docks before they did.
Part of the reason they can laugh is because they’ve done their job well. The infrastructure in the new library – including raised floors that make cabling easily accessible – is designed to accommodate the systems and applications that emerge as libraries go more high-tech.
“We know that over time there may be fewer books, more computers. We found in the old building that we couldn’t add computers because of the cable and wiring issues,” Williams says. “The last thing we want in the new building is to be held back by an inflexible infrastructure.”
In the new central library, staff considered physical and digital assets when configuring the spaces. Collections are laid out around technology, Williams says. For example, books related to a topic such as genealogy or American history are laid out in clusters along with meeting places and banks of computers that are stocked with related Web content, databases and digitized library resources.
Having more PCs for the public to use and greater network capacity are key to make these “learning commons” work. “We have greater potential for downloadable audio and video. The service we can provide via our Web site is greatly expanded, and the speed with which it’s delivered is greatly increased,” Williams says.
Not only is the tech quotient higher than in traditional libraries, but also the atmosphere is more relaxed. A patron can borrow a laptop, grab a cup of coffee from the Dunn Bros. coffee shop on the ground floor, and find a spot to work near one of the library’s four fireplaces. Yes, coffee and soda are allowed in the library, as long as they’re in a covered container. This is not your parents’ library.
