It’s been suggested by a senior council officer that a good proportion of next year’s Isle of Wight council book budget would be spent on the self-service, RFID system.
The most recent figures that VentnorBlog has for the council’s yearly spend on books is £188,000.
Well-placed source reveals figures
Despite VentnorBlog requesting the estimated costs of the self-service system from the council on Wednesday morning, they haven’t provided the information (see details below).
Given this, VB had no option, but pursue the figures via another route. Luckily a well-placed source inside County Hall has been able to fill in the gaps for us.
Unconfirmed by council bosses, we’re told that the cost for self-service machines will be in the region of £11,000 per library.
We understand that figure is what they were going to be, but with so many more now required, the council may be able to negotiate the price down.
Largest cost – unknown
What is unknown, we understand, is the cost of putting the RFID stickers into each and every book that is held by the Island’s library service.
Without the books being marked in this way, the self-service terminals cannot be used.
Given the number of books that the council holds (as a guide, Newport library alone had 37,000 books), this cost could be considerable and, with the need to implement quickly, it’s unclear whether this will be outsourced to a company off the Island, or if there could be some way of giving Isle of Wight people the work.
We asked, but IWC wouldn’t provide
Following news at the Cabinet meeting on Tuesday that self-service machines would be installed in libraries as part of the new proposals, we put in a request with the council press office Resident Information and Consultation Dept on Wednesday morning for the costs of said machines.
Despite chasing, we finally got a response back this afternoon.
Cllr George Brown said: “We are currently in the process of negotiating best price for this equipment so at this stage the information remains commercially sensitive. However, when the price is agreed then the figure will of course be placed in the public domain.”
We’ll let you know once we receive the official figures.
