[OPLINTECH] Hotspot Management

[Joe Dusenbery]

Howdy OPLIN Tech,

I am reaching out to hear how other libraries are managing mobile hotspots
to see if anyone has any tips or tricks that will improve our process.

Unfortunately, hotspots tend to be kept long past their due dates so we
created a procedure designed around encouraging the return of these overdue
hotspots but the procedure is somewhat tedious and time consuming. Our ILS
automatically sends overdue notifications but those get ignored. After
several weeks of being overdue, we turn off the service to encourage their
return. This process is where the tedium comes into play. The majority of
our hotspots have TMobile service through Mobile Citizen who provide them
to us at a very reasonable monthly rate. The trade-off for saving money on
the service is that we do not have any way to stop the service ourselves.
Instead we must contact Mobile Citizen who then contacts TMobile to
temporarily stop the service. This process can take a day or more. We then
manually put notes on the ILS item records so that if/when it is returned,
Circulation staff know the service has been stopped. Circ will then let us
know that the service needs to be restored. We again must contact Mobile
Citizen and there can be even more lag time before we receive confirmation
that the service has been restored and the hotspot can go back into
circulation.

The holds queue for the hotspots is always pretty lengthy so we want to get
them back and out to the next patron as quickly as possible. With our
current process, we wait until the hotspots reach "long overdue" status
before stopping the service which does not happen until they are 30 days
overdue. I'm working with my ILS vendor to get a new report created that
will show all overdue hotspots and how long they have been overdue. That
way we can stop service much sooner at the 7ish days overdue point instead
of 30 days. We think/hope this will have a positive impact.

For those libraries that have hotspots, how do you manage them? Do you also
stop service to encourage their return? What hotspot service provider(s) do
you use? How do you keep everything organized? Any insight/advice is
appreciated.

Thanks,
Joe

Joseph R. Dusenbery, MISST
IT Director
Muskingum County Library System
220 N 5th Street
Zanesville OH 43701
740.453.0391, ext. 152
muskingumlibrary.org
<http://muskingumlibrary.org/>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.oplin.org/pipermail/oplintech/attachments/20220825/cadab62f/attachment.htm>