The Obion County Public Library Streamlines Scheduling & Management Tasks with Humanity

For many years, the mission of the Obion County Public Library in Union City, Tennessee, has been to enrich the lives of the citizens of Obion County by providing them with a wide range of meaningful library materials and by offering helpful programs designed to meet the needs of specific groups of patrons. They continue their commitment, not only to continue this mission, but also to make their library an increasingly significant and relevant part of the lives of their patrons.

The new Obion County Public Library Facility was opened November 16, 2003. The facility has a 30,000 square foot building on approximately 4 acres of land, including large parking and outdoor reading areas. The library catalog contains over 70,000 books, video and audio materials (110,000 max capacity) as well as a large collection of newspapers and magazines, and is the largest public collection in West Tennessee outside of Jackson and Memphis. The library serves about 33,000 people and averages over 2,000 visits a week! With study rooms, a conference room, wireless internet, and a large meeting facility (which may be rented), the library is always busy and visited by students, business people and many others.

In order to cope with the demands, there are a total of 21 paid employees as well as numerous volunteers. Each of the employees works different hours – some 38 hours a week, while other sare 32, 36, 34, 31, 25 and 11 hours a week. Previously, all scheduling was done with a combination of pen and paper and Excel. Keeping up with leave requests and then finding an available employee to fill the vacancy… major headache! It became increasingly overwhelming to deal with some employees taking lunch breaks, some employees taking long lunches, while others were shorter and otherwise. Particularly because all requests were submitted via paper!

Since they have switched to Humanity, scheduling and all management tasks are faster, easier and far more efficient. Humanity has enabled the Obion County Public Library to keep track of all employee hours – it has been particularly helpful to keep all records on the computer, and avoid pen and paper. Vacation requests are streamlined and cannot get lost (unlike paper requests). The integrated shift notifications and reminders ensure that staff doesn’t forget their shifts.