Bucks County Library making strategic plan a reality

Bucks County Free Library is the first consortium to sign on to implement OCLC Wise, the first community engagement system for U.S. public libraries.

 

Wise is a holistic system that takes community engagement and collection management to a new level by combining the power of customer relationship management, marketing, and analytics with integrated library system (ILS) functionality, such as circulation and acquisitions.

 

Wise is different; it’s designed around people, not the collection. It supports libraries’ continued shift into dynamic centers of activity and expands the impact libraries have on their communities.

 

The Bucks County Free Library (BCFL) is a seven-branch county library system with locations in Bensalem, Doylestown, Langhorne, Levittown, Perkasie, Quakertown, and Yardley-Makefield.

 

As part of its strategic plan, BCFL has committed to “continuously evolve in ways that track the pace of new technologies and individual preferences for access to information.” Wise will help BCFL make that plan a reality.

 

“We are always looking for ways to make our patrons’ experiences convenient and enjoyable. We found that Wise met all of our needs. It will allow us to reach our patrons in more meaningful ways and meet their interests,” said Martina Kominiarek, CEO of BCFL. “Additionally, Wise will allow us to utilize our low circulating collections by easily moving them to branches with communities more interested in those topics.”

 

One of the features of the Wise system is that it evolves collections to reflect the preferences not only of the entire library community, but also at an individual branch level. For example, if there is high demand for materials about gardening at one location and a greater need for children’s books at another, the system helps optimize the collection over time to reflect those differences.

 

“Wise empowers stronger customer relationships, helping libraries understand preferences and interests of customers and supports personalized engagement that gets the right message to the right people at the right time,” said Mary Sauer-Games, OCLC vice president, Global Product Management. “We look forward to working with BCFL to help them achieve their goals.”