The new textbook scanner system, headed by Assistant Principal Phil Winston and Technology Coordinator John Bulan, was created to improve the efficiency of the textbook distribution system. It also serves to eliminate various textbook problems in an attempt to ease the burden from teachers and students.

The previous textbook system was not as effective, according to science teacher Eric Ledgerwood. “Last year, teachers were responsible for checking out textbooks in the fall and checking them back in the spring, in addition to checking in files if students lost or didn’t return textbooks,” he said.

Teachers’ responsibilities included handing out a list to students, who would then write down their names and textbook numbers on the list. The teachers gave the lists out to department support people to keep track of textbooks. That system, however, posed several problems.

“We had over $30,000 in book bills, and our system was that every teacher had to keep track of all the books of all the students,” Instructional Technology Coordinator Darlene Feldstein, who was involved in the beginning of the scanner system process, said. “Most [teachers] did a good job, but some didn’t have the time to follow up with students.”

Teachers have many other responsibilities towards the end of the year, which made it hard for teachers to make time to manage last year’s textbook system. “There was a lot of work at the end of the year in addition to checking in textbooks, like getting grades done” Ledgerwood said. According to him, the school lost many books when students transferred out of a class or dropped out of the class altogether. Furthermore, the school did not have the money to pay for these losses. The new system was created to prevent them.

“We decided to do a different system where one person would bar code all the books and we could keep track of that,” Feldstein said. “It’s better for teachers. The teachers have so many other teaching tasks, so it’s good that they don’t have to be involved.”

The scanner system began due to the need for an official system to organize textbooks. It required nearly a year of preparation beforehand, involving visiting other schools and talking to them about what their systems were like.

During the initial process, Bulan was responsible for gathering 20,000 textbooks for the school’s 1900 students into one location and manually bar-coding and scanning each book into a large database. Winston’s job involved initiating all communication with teachers and volunteers in order to get people to run the system.

According to Bulan, the two-day textbook distribution process went so efficiently that it probably could have been cut down to one day. “We gave ourselves more than enough time to check out students,” he said. “It was our first time [using the system] and I didn’t know what to expect. I wanted to save room for problems and make sure there would be no issues with software, servers, or computers.”

Books were prepared for class pick-up according to an organized schedule. When students filed in, they went to one of ten different scanner stations and showed their ID or gave their ID number. Scanners matched student ID’s with the unique bar code on their into the database system. “Now when books are lost and brought to the office, all we have to do is type in the barcode on the book and the owner shows up,” Winston said.

The new system has allowed for lost books to be immediately returned to students, Bulan said. Due to its success, it is also being implemented in other places at school. “We’re seeing this system expanding to musical instruments, possibly sports equipment, audio/visual equipment that may be used in certain classes, and it’s currently being used in the Academic Center,” Winston said.