SIERRA VISTA — From a distance, the automated vending machine near the children’s play area and Joann’s Fabrics in The Mall at Sierra Vista looks like any other loaded with drinks and snacks.
But not this one.
No Twix or Mr. Goodbars, no bags of Cheetos and not a Pepsi in sight.
Instead, you’ll find an automated library vending machine — often referred to as ALVMs — filled with books, from the New York Times current bestselling list of adult and children’s fiction courtesy of the Sierra Vista Public Library.
Installed Nov. 28, it’s taken convenience for book lovers to the next level.
“It’s like a mini library,” said Sierra Vista Public Library Manager Emily Duchon, who was instrumental in getting the project off the ground. ”They’re becoming very popular, in places like airports and shopping malls. We’re pretty excited to see how this takes off.”
Funded in part by Friends of the Library and the city for just more than $30,000, the ALVM in the mall holds 135 books and is accessed by scanning a library card or punching in the card’s number. Once the machine’s RFID tracking chip authenticates a user’s identification, the glass door opens, and voila! — you can take out as many books as you like.
You can return them to the mini library or to the public library on Tacoma Street.
It’s that simple.
“I’ve been kicking this project around for about a year, and the mall seemed like a perfect fit for the NovelBranch Mini-Library machine,” said Duchon. “There are dozens of companies manufacturing them, but this one seemed like the easiest to operate and came with a warranty and tech support for any malfunction.”
Though new to Sierra Vista, ALVMs have been around for some time and are gaining more traction, expanding access to library services in the era of COVID.
With the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention listing Cochise County as one of eight Arizona counties that have returned to a high COVID-19 level, the ALVM in the mall not only provides an option for library patrons who view going to the library a health risk, it also eliminates driving in traffic during the holiday season to get to the library on Tacoma Street.
Placed in high-traffic areas like shopping malls, ALVMs that are popping up throughout the country are reaching a wider audience that doesn’t have to wait for a late library opening or an early closing time.
“We’ve wanted to get a library presence on that side of town because of how it’s growing there,” said Duchon. “The machine is able to track geographically which customers are using it. That information might be useful down the road if we feel that a small library branch is needed in that area.”
Feel like reading a good scare from Stephen King at 10 p.m., or maybe some Jane Austen for a look back into the era of the landed British gentry?
As long as the mall’s doors are open, you can access a book with the swipe of your library card.
Installing the mini library at The Mall in Sierra Vista right after Thanksgiving makes perfect sense, especially for capturing holiday shoppers. Placed adjacent to the children’s play area, it also allows parents to take out a children’s book and encouraging a child’s interest in reading.
“With mall walkers utilizing the mall for indoor walking, we also felt the machine might serve the walkers as well,” said Duchon. “We wanted to create a symbiotic relationship with the mall and when I approached mall manager Sabra Britton with the idea six months ago, she loved it so much she asked, ‘where do you want it?’ ”
The ability to get a library book without having to physically go inside your library is not a new concept, but it’s a novel one that encourages library users — as well as potential ones — to make it easier to check out books, including audio books along with DVDs, without having wade through traffic and weather to get there.
Some ALVMs have the capacity to hold 300 books with 25 different titles, according to Chesterfield Education Services. In larger cities like Toronto and Anaheim, California, Book Riot— the largest editorial book site in North America — says ALVMs have been placed in transit centers, which not only makes it easy for people waiting for a bus to access a book, it also encourages transit users to sign up for a library card.
ALVMs have even found their footing in northeastern Europe. They’ve been extremely popular in Poland, where its cities were among the first to think about installing them as a pandemic solution, says Book Riot.
“In time, we’ll add audio books and DVDs, but right now we’re interested to see how the community takes to what we have available in the machine,” said Duchon.