Announcing the Final Pilot Project Selections

Hello everyone!

We had a lot of great pilot project ideas submitted, which made this an incredibly difficult decision. Thank you to everyone who contributed! We appreciate your energy, forward thinking, and innovative spirits. We have identified the projects we will be moving forward with, which are listed below:

Phases & Timing
These projects will be implemented in phases—not all at once. Three phases will be staggered, with a few projects going at a time as grouped above. The preliminary order of implementation was determined based on the project’s popularity with staff, the project sponsor’s readiness, and projected timeline.

Projects that required additional lead-time or the implementation of other things before we get started were moved to later phases of the pilot implementation process.

We will continue scoping these projects in the coming months, with our goal date for the first phase of implementation later this fall. As we scope in more depth, it may be decided that some of these projects aren’t feasible. And that’s okay! But at this stage, it is up to the project sponsors and most heavily-impacted departments to decide how much we can take on in this first batch of pilot projects.

Selection Process
Based on the projects that met our strategic and organizational goals as identified by Leadership Team, Library Managers were given the opportunity to select a project for implementation at their locations. They selected from a shortened list of the projects that were top staff picks. Of the pilots selected by managers, each project was then evaluated for feasibility in meetings with library managers. The list above represents projects that meet our system’s goals, make sense financially this year, and have been selected by a library manager.

Not-A-Pilot Projects
There were some selected projects that will not be pursued as pilots, though we look forward to exploring them separately from the pilot process. We will work with managers at Del City (Career/Resume Counselors) and Capitol Hill (Bicycle Repair Station) to develop these concepts as programs/community partnerships. While the Book Vending Machine is an exciting prospect, the cost as scoped is prohibitive at this time ($200,000-300,000, or half of our total pilot budget). This is something we may look at re-scoping, re-tooling, and re-exploring after the first phases of pilot projects are complete.