HELENA – The Lewis and Clark Library is now offering virtual library cards to their patrons as a part of the new library app cloudLibrary.
Developed by bibliotheca, the new app provides mobile checkout, interactive receipts and the ability for families to manage everyone’s checked out materials all in one place.
“cloudLibrary allows Lewis and Clark Library patrons to not only manage their physical items a little better, getting notifications, holds, getting a list of what they need to return back to the library but also actually checking a book out with their cell phone,” said Jordan Hanlon, the Customer Experience Manager with bibliotheca.
cloudLibrary will also send an alert when an item is getting close to becoming overdue.
Lewis and Clark will be the one of the first libraries in the world to integrate the app into their system and Systems Manager Matt Beckstrom said he is excited about offering this new service to patrons.
“We have a long history of being on the edge of some technology so this is kind of exciting,” said Beckstrom. “We had a chance with bibliotheca to offer this. They wanted somebody that had the right technology, the right location, the right amount of people and had the right services we provided.”
cloudLibrary app is available for free through the Apple App Store or Google Play and library staff say they’re also more than happy to assist anyone with getting the app set up in person.
Users will then need to login using their library card number and PIN in order to use the service.
