Total Enrollment: 15,500+ Students across 4 Campuses
EasyLobby systems in Place: 3 Libraries, 7 Residence Halls, 3 Administrative Buildings
Visitors per Day Badged: approximately 1500
Background and Initial Implementation
During Loyola University’s search for a ‘one-card’ student ID system, they recognized that such a system wouldn’t necessarily be suitable for areas of the campus that are frequented by non-students.
A particular problem was posed by the fact that Loyola is an urban campus with other institutions nearby, and many facilities such as libraries were frequently visited by students from other nearby institutions such as Depaul and Northwestern.
“How to manage our libraries was the concern that drove our initial interest in Visitor Management,” said Frank Dale, Manager of Physical Security for Loyola. “We had a fair number of visitors as well as students from other campuses and needed a program for them – the ‘one-card’ system wouldn’t work. We were having some petty thefts plus, more importantly, we simply wanted to know who was in our facilities.”
From Libraries to Residence Halls
Prior to the EasyLobby deployment, visitor logs at Loyola were kept by hand and on a building-by-building basis – there was no automation. As security became increasingly important, and because of the need to integrate across facilities – such as the 3 libraries – Loyola’s security & facilities executives realized that a ‘by hand’ system wasn’t feasible and would not be able to scale as the campus expanded in both the Lake Shore and Downtown (Water Tower) locations.
A meeting was assembled with representatives of the libraries, the Dean of Students and student organizations to find a better way to manage visitors, and EasyLobby was selected as the solution.
The use of EasyLobby at Loyola “has grown significantly since the initial library implementation” said Dale. The university is currently using EasyLobby at 3 libraries, 7 residence halls and 3 (soon-to-be 4) administrative buildings. All systems are networked to the same central database, where enterprise-wide data is integrated, analyzed and reported on. In many facilities EasyLobby is integrated with security gates.
Protecting the Residence Halls
An important expansion of EasyLobby took place in the residence halls at the Main and Water Tower campuses, where it is used to manage student visitors. According to Dale, the typical Loyola residence hall receives approximately 100 visitors per day. EasyLobby is used for reconciliation at the end of visiting hours so that campus administration knows which guests are still on-campus and which have checked out.
“EasyLobby has helped make our campuses safer” said Dale. “Especially since we are located in an urban setting, we place a high premium on keeping out unwanted visitors, and on keeping our students, faculty and staff safe.”
Reducing Library Theft – and Gaining ROI
Another benefit of EasyLobby and a significant source of Return-on-Investment (ROI) has been the elimination of petty theft at the libraries since EasyLobby was deployed.
“We were having issues with petty thefts in the libraries, which was especially difficult to manage with so many visitors plus students from other campuses” said Dale. “It was extremely difficult to manage those thefts before we deployed EasyLobby because our visitor data was kept by hand and not integrated across facilities, but these days the rate of theft is effectively zero.”
Expanding with the Campus
According to Dale “We have new buildings going online all the time across our campuses,” As a result of EasyLobby’s responsiveness and proactive assistance, “we plan to grow our EasyLobby deployment as the campus grows.”
For additional information, click here.
Easy Lobby February 2009 press release.
