From Selection to Shelf: A Process Improvement Experience

After Hillsboro Public Library (HPL) used design thinking to build a collaborative service model on the public floor, we wanted to extend it behind the scenes. How could we achieve our goal of getting items from door to floor in under 48 hours? How could we improve the workflow with selection, acquisitions, cataloging, and processing to create a 7-day-a-week operation? The library teamed up with the City’s Eureka! Project to use process improvement tools to analyze our systems and workflow. We involved non-library staff on the team to get an outsider’s perspective, and we asked the staff doing the work lots and lots of questions. After three days we identified short, medium, and long-term action items to meet our goals and ultimately provide better service to patrons.