Convenient and intuitive printing and payment solution – Why Aberdeen City Libraries chose Princh
About Aberdeen City Libraries
Aberdeen is a vibrant city in the Northeast of Scotland, with people working and studying from across the world. Known as the Oil capital of Europe with many granite buildings it is also known as The Granite City, when the sun shines on the granite it sparkles giving rise to being branded ‘The Silver City with the Golden Sand’ in the 1950s. This has been the basis of our username on social media of ‘SilverCityLibs’.
Aberdeen City Libraries has 10 community libraries in addition to the Central Library with Adult Lending, Children’s, Information Centre and Media departments. Our busiest location is Central Library, with the Media Centre providing the most public PCs. The main part of the library was built in 1892 with other parts being added in later years and it forms a trio of buildings known as Education, Salvation and Damnation (Central Library, St Mark’s Church and His Majesty’s Theatre).
Challenges
Prior to providing Princh in Aberdeen, we had a large proportion of public computers used for printing. In fact, there were times when all computers were busy, and people had to wait for one to become free before being able to print. In addition, library users often required staff support to recover passwords to access their email or online storage to navigate to their documents, making it a time consuming process for all. When investigating possible solutions, Princh was the most cost-effective and easy-to-use service to provide WiFi printing. Staff in our community libraries also identified being able to pay through the app as a benefit as card payments are not possible in the community libraries.
“When I came into post one of my first tasks was to complete the procurement process for Princh in Aberdeen City Libraries. As I collated feedback from staff, they were very complimentary about the ease of use of the app for those who are not so skilled with technology and the time it saved them helping customers to print.”
– Jacqueline Geekie, Digital Inclusion Librarian
Results
Working with Princh has been very straightforward and the support has been very prompt and professional. The training on the website was very useful when training staff on the use of Princh and reporting issues. The feedback from staff has been overwhelmingly positive with the ease of use being most quoted as a benefit. It has also been a time saver for staff as they need to provide only minimal support when using the app and the computers are available for library users rather than just to print. One member of staff said “Very user friendly and intuitive. Very good feedback from members of the public and a few regulars who have started to come in simply to use the service. Paying online makes their lives much easier and it makes a lot of difference for the staff as well.”
We have received similar feedback from library customers who found it easy to use. One customer commented “Thank you for recommending princh, I’m impressed by how quick and easy to use.” and another stated “Princh is really handy. I’ve been here using it so much since no one in my family has a printer.”
“Princh has been a welcome addition to the services we provide.”
– Jacqueline Geekie, Digital Inclusion Librarian