Mary Riley Styles Public Library in the City of Falls Church will be going paperless as of this Friday, Jan. 1 in hopes to “improve efficiency, save money and assist library visitors,” the City announced in a release today.
Starting in the New Year, patrons will now receive overdue notices and reserve alerts via e-mail addresses that they’ve provided to the library. For reserve notices, if people have not provided the library with an e-mail address, they will be called when an item is ready to pick up. However, patrons are encouraged to provide an up-to-date e-mail address to the library in light of the switch to receive timely notices. It’s been assured that all e-mail addresses will remain confidential and will not given out to third parties.
Not only is the local facility making efforts to go green, but it will also implement a new integrated library computer system beginning Wednesday, Jan. 20. Officials say the “new system will have far more capability that the current one” and forewarns patrons that “some disruption of service may occur while data is loaded from the old system to the new one.” This will affect remote access to the online catalog and patron accounts during a brief span of time on Jan. 18 and 19.
Conscious of the potential effects of these changes, the library will hold a Fine Amnesty Week from Monday, Jan. 11 – Sunday, Jan. 17. All items that are overdue and returned during that time will have their fines forgiven. However, fines for previously overdue items and fees for lost or damaged items will not be removed from patron records.
On Friday, Jan. 8, the library will open at 1 p.m. on as it will be closed in the morning for staff training on the new library system.
In addition, the library will be closed on Monday, Jan. 18, in observance of the Martin Luther King holiday and closed on Tuesday, Jan. 19, while final data migration occurs for the new library system. Regular operating hours will be observed (9 a.m. – 9 p.m.) on Wednesday, Jan. 20.
For more information visit www.falls-church.lib.va.us or call 703-248-5030.
