With a monthslong quarantine testing the limits of home collections, the city and county’s library systems are here to help.

The Spokane Public Library announced Monday it is now offering curbside pickup of reserved books and materials at several branches.

The Spokane County Public Library District began offering the service earlier this month and found immediate success.

In the first five days after it launched on June 3, the county library served about 2,300 customers.

“We’ve had a couple minor tweaks to work out, but the service is moving smoothly and library staff have enjoyed their interactions with our customers, who seem happy to be accessing our books and materials again,” said Jane Baker, a spokeswoman for the county library.

The city, meanwhile, got creative to facilitate its curbside service, which began on Monday.

“All our staff was really excited to launch curbside pickup and many people pitched in, from facilities to librarians to IT,” said Amanda Donovan, a library spokesperson. “We were fortunate to have a great scheduling platform already in place that we were able to repurpose to facilitate curbside pickup appointment scheduling.”

Both public libraries had long hoped to offer curbside pickup service, but were on pause while they awaited guidelines from Gov. Jay Inslee’s office during the “Stay Home, Stay Healthy” order. Inslee’s office released the guidelines for libraries under Phase 2 of the state’s reopening plan on June 2.

The guidelines include requiring libraries to quarantine returned materials for at least 24 hours and provide employees with masks and gloves. In-person services remain prohibited. Libraries will be able to open, likely with limited capacity, in Phase 3 of the governor’s reopening plan.

How it works Adhering to state guidelines, the pickup process is similar for the county and city library systems.

Curbside pickup is available at almost every branch of the city and county library systems, but the times and services vary. Details can be found on the city library website, spokanelibrary.org, and the county library district website, scld.org.

The branches offering curbside pickup for the Spokane Public Library include Hillyard, Indian Trail, South Hill and East Side. The downtown branch is closed for renovations, but limited hours will be made available for pickup service nearby on Spokane Falls Boulevard.

In both systems, the patron places a hold on the book, DVD or other material in which they are interested through the library’s online catalog. The library will notify that person when the item is available for pickup.

At every county library branch, spots are marked as reserved for curbside pickup, with a sign that displays a phone number to call when the patron arrives. A library employee will answer the phone and ask for the library card number, name and vehicle of the person picking up materials.

The city’s library system is asking patrons to plan ahead and use a new mobile app, call (509) 444-5333 or visit spokanelibrary.org/curbside to schedule a specific pickup time.

The county library employee will wheel out bagged materials and drop them in the trunk of the vehicle or in a side door. If maintaining 6 feet of social distance is impossible – say, from a customer who is on a motorcycle – the employee will leave the materials on the ground.

County customers who don’t have a cell phone, or have poor service, can arrange a pickup time before they travel to the library.

The city’s employees, donning a mask and gloves, will bring materials out wrapped in plastic and drop them off on the curb.

Materials being returned to either library network cannot be handed back to an employee. To protect the health of employees, items must be dropped off in a return box outside the library.

Book backlog Both the county and city library systems had stopped taking in returned books and materials after they closed their doors.

Now, they’re working through the backlog as customers return materials, according to Baker.

At the Spokane Public Library, there are more than 60,000 items still checked out since before the closure in March.

The city’s library system also has about 10,000 materials on hold, and is working to meet that high demand.

At the South Hill branch alone, it’s hoping to fulfill the orders of more than 700 patrons every day this week.

“We will be monitoring the queue and doing our best to get items out to customers as quickly as possible,” Donovan said.