Going Beyond Loaning Books to Loaning Technologies: A Practical Guide for Librarians

Providing library users with actual pieces of technological equipment that they can borrow is a continuously expanding service at many libraries, especially as faculty and teachers require multimodal projects. For some libraries, loanable technology may include calculators, gaming devices, headphones, e-readers, laptops, and tablets. Increasingly though, there is also demand for all types of cameras, lighting, voice recorders, microphones, external storage devices, projectors, peripherals and converters, among hundreds of possibilities.

Based on their successful program at a large research institution, the authors provide a practical manual, complete with examples, forms, and templates that cover all aspects of establishing and maintaining a loanable technology program.

Going Beyond Books to Loaning Technologies: A Practical Guide for Librarians provides the nuts and bolts and the “behind-the scenes” details of developing a program and walks librarians and information technology professionals through even some of the complex decisions and processes, such as:

needs assessment budget allocation selecting, cataloging, processing and storing equipment; circulation, billing, and troubleshooting training collaborating with others to offer consultation servicesmarketing, and assessment
Practical and easy to understand, here is a one-stop guide for anyone interested in lending technology to patrons.

Janelle Sander manages the Loanable Technology program at the Undergraduate Library at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She has a BA in English-Teaching with a minor in School Library Media Studies from the University of Northern Iowa and a MLIS from UW-Milwaukee.

Lori S. Mestre is professor of library administration and has been the head of the Undergraduate Library at UIUC since 2009 and was the digital learning librarian at UIUC from 2005-2009. In addition to her MALS degree, she has a doctorate in multicultural education.

Eric Kurt is the Media Commons Coordinator at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has a BS and MS in Computer Graphics Technology from Purdue University.