The Portage Regional Library started up their new card lock system for drop-offs today in Portage la Prairie. Librarian Percy Gregoire outlines the system.

Percy Gregoire-Voskamp"It's designed to safeguard the building against things like fire, which we did have in 2002. What we're going to be doing is we're going to be offering to the public either the choice of a fob or a card. There will be a $20 dollar deposit fee for that. It's a very expensive system. It's something like $9,000 dollars. If we'd had to do it out 2016 budget then that would have been a little bit difficult because we had a $17,000 dollar cut in our budget."

Gregoire says the deposit's refundable.

"And that deposit is refundable if people decide they don't want it any longer, or they're leaving town. As long as it's still in working order. They'll have to bear with the staff a little bit. It's a whole new training process. We've been trained but have not done it. So, there's a learning curve. We'd probably prefer that patrons that want that service would try it out before they leave just to make sure it works."

The system can keep track of patrons who use the box, informing them the time of day they came in along with their names. Gregoire says it's too long in coming, after over a year and half when they discovered they had a problem with the former card system. He notes he suspects it was a matter of hardware and software conflicts. The commercial card lock system was chosen after having used a system installed in 2004 whose writer was local and moved away. The old system was paid for by the City, and made use of membership cards, but the current one has come out of the library's budget.

You have the option of using a fob or key card