Since my last message, I have implemented text message notices. We have seen times from text notice sent to item picked up in as little as 25 minutes.

As is mentioned, people carry their phones everywhere. Texting them of a hold pickup means they can swing by the library and get the item if they are out and about. Average text is read and responded to in less than 20 minutes — phone, e-mail, and snail mail are nowhere close.

The faster the item is picked up, the quicker our hold queue moves. That means we may not have to purchase as many copies to satisfy demand. If an item sits on the hold shelf for 3 days while the USPS does their thing, the queue gets longer and longer..

I have an article out in the Jan. 2009 Computers in Libraries talking about our implementations of various text messaging ideas.

Peter Konshak
http://pklibrarytech.blogspot.com/

Just offering another option. A lot of people really like communicating via text message. Its really incredibly convenient- I always have my phone with me but I don’t always have my official USPS mailbox with me.

We have a “send to phone” button that can send callnumbers to mobile devices. It’s in our catalog (http://webcat.carmel.lib.in.us) at the callnumber level.

We’ve integrated program reminders sent as texts — they queue up and are sent out the day before the event. See our calendar at http://www.carmel.lib.in.us/calendar/calendar.cfm

We’re working on notices but I haven’t pulled the trigger on that yet. I want them to be under the character limit and succinct (existing notices are too wordy for the text environment).

I’m writing an article on some of this stuff, but it won’t be published until January 2009.

I’m curious to see what others are doing with texting..

Customers should also be able to choose to limit the number of sms messages they receive a month/week to limit the damage that can be done to their account.

I’m not going to hold my breath that the proprietary commercial ILS vendors are going to come out with this service anytime soon, they move much too slow, but hopefully I am wrong. Evergreen or Koha can probably implement this quickly if there is enough interest.

Oh, and several libraries have been doing “Send call numbers to SMS” for a while now, which demonstrates the right way to do things as far as message size goes. (This is done with a simple perl script IIRC)
http://phebe.bowdoin.edu/record=b2012891~S1 (Button on center of page)