Two words I thought I’d never see together: Library & Groupon

I must say I’m rather proud of the Edmon­ton Pub­lic Lib­rary — my loc­al lib­rary. They were one of the first in Canada to:

• offer free Wi-Fi to members,
• jump into social media,
• equip branches with self-check­out barscan­ners and RFID chip auto­mated checkin,
• allow online holds and media reservations,
• cre­ate a mobile lib­rary app,
• offer digit­al deliv­ery of ‘loaned’ material.

And now they’re tak­ing advant­age of Groupon to offer dis­counts on mem­ber­ship renewals.

This last ini­ti­at­ive is just anoth­er step the lib­rary is tak­ing to remain rel­ev­ant, and stim­u­late mem­ber­ship by ‘being where the users are’, while magazines, news­pa­pers and oth­er forms of tra­di­tion­al media are being chal­lenged by mobile inter­net technologies.

At the close of the offer, it looks like just under two thou­sand people bought in to the concept and bought $6.00 lib­rary cards — a steal, actu­ally for all the ser­vices offered.

But mine can’t be the only for­ward-think­ing lib­rary in Canada…got an example of your pub­lic lib­rary embra­cing tech? Write about it in the comments!

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