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Wichita Library Working To Digitize Library Card Applications

Deborah Shaar
/
KMUW
The Central Library served as the main branch in the Wichita Public Library system for more than 50 years.

The Wichita Public Library system is working to digitize its library card applications. It’s one of the projects that began in preparation for the move to the new Advanced Learning Library.

Library staff has been working more than a year to digitize thousands of originallibrary card applications kept at the Central Library downtown.

Libraries Director Cynthia Berner says the city’s records management system and access to technology made the switch possible. Besides, she says, the numerous file cabinets holding the applications take up a lot of space.

Berner says processing the old applications is a reminder about the library’s reach into the community.

"When you are handling truly thousands of applications of people who have made use of the library, you realize that you are doing something that makes a big difference in the community," she says.

The digitization project is expected to be finished after the new library opens next month.

Follow Deborah Shaar on Twitter @deborahshaar. To contact KMUW News or to send in a news tip, reach us at news@kmuw.org.

Deborah joined the news team at KMUW in September 2014 as a news reporter. She spent more than a dozen years working in news at both public and commercial radio and television stations in Ohio, West Virginia and Detroit, Michigan. Before relocating to Wichita in 2013, Deborah taught news and broadcasting classes at Tarrant County College in the Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas area.