Check out the latest Wichita Public Library items: free passes to area attractions

Within minutes of becoming available, many of the free attraction passes now available through the Wichita Public Library were either checked out or on hold.

“I’ve been watching it all day and going ‘wow, wow,’” said Sarah Kittrell, the library’s collection development division manager who put together the proposal to offer what the library calls Experience Passes. The family passes, good for a seven-day checkout to visit area attractions, became available Monday.

“We knew they’d be popular,” Kittrell said. “I’m so thrilled with how they are doing.”

Within four hours of the program being rolled out, patrons had already put more than 350 holds on the different passes.

The most popular by far of the free family passes available for 11 attractions are for Tanganyika Wildlife Park near Goddard. The library has 15 passes available for that attraction and had nearly 150 hold requests by Wednesday afternoon.

The Tanganyika passes, good for admission only, averaged one hold request per minute for 45 minutes after the passes became available.

Besides Tanganyika, the other attractions are Botanica, Exploration Place, Mid-American All-Indian Museum, Sedgwick County Zoo, Museum of World Treasures, Wichita Art Museum, Old Cowtown Museum, Great Plains Transportation Museum, Wichita-Sedgwick County Historical Museum and the Cosmosphere in Hutchinson.

The number of passes available for each attraction varies. As many as 15 passes are available for some of the more popular attractions, including the zoo, Exploration Place and Botanica.

A library trend

Attraction passes are the latest offering within the Wichita library’s nontraditional collection, which also includes equipment like anatomical models, binoculars, microscopes and even hotspots that can be checked out.

Libraries in several communities surrounding Wichita — including Goddard, Andover, Derby, McConnell Air Force Base and Mulvane — have been offering attraction passes for the past few years, and it’s something that Wichita library patrons have asked about, Kittrell said.

“We took inspiration from the other libraries that have done this,” Kittrell said. “We reached out to them to see what was working for them. And then we just brainstormed a list of area attractions we thought people might be interested in. We were very excited this year when we were able to roll it out.”

A $14,000 grant from the Wichita Library Foundation helped make the rollout possible. Kittrell said she spent $12,826 buying most of the passes, while some attractions, including WAM, the historical museum, the Cosmosphere and Old Cowtown, donated passes.

The passes, which are in the form of a lanyard, function like any family membership pass to an attraction. In most cases, the passes provide admission for at least a family of four.

Since attraction membership passes are only good for either a year from the date of purchase or expire at the end of a calendar year, the library will need to again look for funding to continue the program next year, Kittrell said.

How it works

Anyone with a Wichita Public Library card can check out or put on hold an attraction pass. A customer can check out up to two attraction passes at a time.

During the seven-day checkout period, the customer can make unlimited visits to the attraction using the lanyard pass. If there are no holds on the attraction pass, the customer can renew the pass.

Based on how popular the passes have already been, renewals likely won’t be possible, particularly for more popular attractions, Kittrell said.

A comprehensive listing of the attraction passes and which branches have them, along with details on each attraction’s passes can be found on the library’s website in its Library of Things section for nontraditional library items (wichitalibrary.org/things). Customers can also place a hold on the pass through the website.

The library has set aside a few of the multiple passes it has for the more popular attractions as part of its “Lucky Day Collection,” used for high-demand items.

Lucky Day items can’t be put on hold, so even if the library’s website shows multiple holds for an attraction pass, it doesn’t necessarily mean a customer will go away empty-handed. Kittrell advises that customers ask a librarian about checking out a popular attraction pass.

“If it’s still available, it’s their lucky day,” Kittrell said.