How do your patrons check out their books? If you are public then obviously the patrons bring in their cards. If you are in a school ,you might have a variety of options. High School might have cards- or you might just type in their last name. Or you might have them listed by class and on a Rolodex where you can just flip to the class and zap their last name. Some elementary's use the notebook method where by each class is listed with students bar code and you can just wand over that. My system is a card system. As each class come to the library, I take out their class library cards. When it is check out time, the cards come out and the student gets there card before approaching the circulation desk.