"We are now sending more than 5000 SMS messages a month," Morris said.

"With the introduction of SMS it was envisaged the cost of [postage] would be reduced with a letter costing 50 cents and an SMS 18 cents. This proved successful but what we also found was those previously receiving e-mails, which cost near to nothing, preferred SMS which came at a cost."

To integrate SMS functionality into its lending system, the council adapted a series of SQL scripts provided by another council to meet its needs and used a Data Transformation Services (DTS) package to export the data to an external communications provider which sends the SMS messages daily.

"It was not very difficult to achieve, but with SMS messages being immediate, and with our library being heavily automated, we needed to be careful to time the message for when the item was actually available for pickup," Morris said.

Since items can be borrowed from one of four specific libraries, messages needed to contain details of which library, and which multiple items, could be requested at one time.