Workstation ID cards

If you have a patron who want workstation access and they can't use their Gator1 Card for some reason (they don't have one or theirs cannot be activated) please refer them to the circulation staff. The circ staff do have workstation ID cards they can give patrons, but there is an entire procedure to set them up in the system that they'll need to follow and the patron will need a photo ID to show the circ staff member as well.

Requests from Storage

Due to a problem with the server for the Alternative Form, any items requested from storage over the weekend (From Friday 1pm on) may not be able to be delivered any earlier than Tuesday (tomorrow). Check with circ staff for the most recent information.

Today on the desk

The Aleph v18 Upgrade seems to have gone rather smoothly. Be sure that you're opening v18 when on the desk. If you can't remember how to navigate in the new version, feel free to ask any of the circ folks for help, or you can call me at 3-2523 and I'll try to walk you through it.

There has been a problem this weekend and today with the Verify Patron server. This is the server that controls patrons ability to log in to the workstations and ID checker. Systems is working on it now and expect it to be working around noon today.

Minutes from Summer B Team Meeting: BIG changes afoot!

Happy Monday!

It’s time to talk about Fall. We talked about these items during our Summer B Team meeting, and as promised here is the email follow-up. I’ll also post this to the blog.

Hellos & Goodbyes:
Summer B is coming to a close, but I wanted to recognize the folks who came on board for Summer B and those who have had to leave as well. Michelle Foss and Matthew Loving joined the Information Point schedule in July. Sonia Tergas, Enrico Gumbayan and Margeaux Johnson have had to leave us. They will be missed.

Scheduling:
With the hiring freeze I know every unit is feeling stretched right now. With this in mind we’re trying something a little different this Fall. What we propose is from Monday, 8/20 – Friday, 9/7 we’d like to fully staff the desk with as many of our current Information Specialists as possible during these first three weeks of Fall.

After the third week of classes, starting Monday 9/10, we will change up the schedule and only staff the desk between the hours of 11am-3pm. Historically these are the busiest hours on the desk and the Circulation staff is spread thinly at this time due to lunches and meetings. This will cut our total Information Point coverage to only 20 hours a week. I’m hopeful that even though many of our Information Specialists are pressed for time having to take on additional duties due to the hiring freeze and other circumstances, we will be able to fully staff the desk during these peak hours.

So to this end, please contact me with two pieces of information:

1. Let me know whether you can maintain your current Information Point schedule through Friday, 9/7. If you need to change your schedule during these first three weeks, let me know and I’ll do my best to move shifts around to accommodate all requests. (The desk schedule for Summer will end on 8/9/07 for intercession.)

2. Let me know what days/times will work for you best between 11am-3pm for the remainder of the Fall semester. If you’re already scheduled during that time period and prefer to keep your timeslot unchanged, please let me know and you will have priority in that time slot. If you will be unable to continue volunteering on the desk after 9/7, please let me know that as well.

Training:
The folks at the meeting this week agreed that while the trainings are very useful and pertinent, we probably don’t need them offered for fall. There are only a few folks who haven’t yet been able to attend the trainings, and I was able to meet with each of them one on one to go over all the training objectives individually. We’ll revisit training for Spring. If you feel you need more practice with Ares, check out the tutorials online at: https://ares.uflib.ufl.edu/videos.html. They are very helpful. Also I’m happy to come out and spend a shift or two with you to provide any training you think you might need.

Survey:
We discussed the results of the General Satisfaction survey. The results are available online here and are overall very positive. Thank you to everyone who participated!

Statistics:
We took a look at the Summer A statistics. The number of questions was drastically lower than it had been during Fall and Spring, but the ratio between types of questions was consistent with the rest of the year. Current statistics are available online here.

Thank you to all of the Information Specialists for sticking with the desk this summer. While the traffic wasn’t nearly as high as the rest of the year, we did help nearly 3,000 patrons in May and June alone. We are making a difference out there!

The Big Silver Boxes:
This came up after our meeting, but I wanted to let everyone know that the new prototype for a replacement for our big silver boxes is up on display near the Information Point. Please come take a look at the prototype (note the information about how the real one will look- with etched glass, not clear) and express your opinions about it. If you’d like your comments to be anonymous, feel free to email them to me and I will compile them into a document for Carol and Lori.

Revisiting Printing in the Library

We had some confusion about printing from the circulating laptops. To revisit this issue I spoke with Amy Polk and confirmed that yes, patrons can print from the circulating laptops just like they can from any other library computer that prints. When they click print, they'll be prompted to enter a "print release key" which is basically a code-word they will use at the print release station to identify their print job. It can be anything they can easily remember.

Amy will work on getting some printing information/instruction up on the library website. I'll link to it from our Useful Links page as soon as it is up.

To recap on what computers are available with what capabilities:

We have 110 computers available in the General Computing Area (which includes everything on the 3rd floor except the 18 dual-monitor computers on the east side of the building).

These computers, the 2nd floor standing computers, and the laptops students can checkout will print to either the Blue or Orange printers. Both printers are on the 3rd floor. Orange is on the west side of the building, blue is on the east side next to the copier machine. A colored sticker on the monitor will indicate which printer they should go to. All the circulation laptops print to Orange, computers on the 2nd floor print to Orange, computers on the west side of the 3rd floor print to Orange and computers in the middle of the 3rd floor print to Blue.

Patrons' personal laptops can NOT print in the library at all.

The "Digital Media Center" has 18 dual-monitor computers with web design and image editing software. These 18 computers do NOT print.

There are 2 computers on the north side of the stacks on the 1st, 2nd and 3rd floors. These may not have applications like MS office on them, but they do have internet access. These six computers do NOT print.

Returning videos & DVDs

When a patron turns in a video or DVD to you, please make sure to discharge it in Aleph before setting it on the back table. Or, if you aren't comfortable discharging in Aleph yet, you can also give them to one of the circulation students or staff to discharge. Circ will take care of putting them in the security cases and everything, but they will assume that any media on the back table have already been returned in Aleph.

Summer B Team Meeting

You've probably seen the email invitation already, but I thought I'd include it here as well. We'll be meeting Tuesday, July 24th from 10-11am for our Summer B Team Meeting in Room 253 (the conference room in Access Services. I'll meet folks outside the door to let everyone into the area. Hope to see you there!

Our tentative agenda includes:
Hellos & Goodbyes

Upcoming Fall semester:
-Recruitment
-Training: Any changes?
-Schedule: Any changes?

Results from the General Satisfaction Survey
Next Survey projected

Statistics from Summer A

Not on shelf?

This came up today in Access Services, and while many folks may already know about this form, a few might not have had this come up yet...

If a patron comes to you and can't find an item on the shelves (book or video/DVD) go ahead and check the availability in the catalog (even if they say they already did) and if it should be on the shelf please have them fill out the "Not On Shelf" form. These aren't online, they're on the table behind the circulation desk. If the catalog record looks funny and you're not sure if the item is on the shelf or not, you can refer them to the circulation staff member also. I'll be the first to admit I don't know what all the item status codes mean.

While there are a few times I've gone into the stacks myself to help a patron find a book, you're not required to do so, especially if the desk is busy. Depending on how busy the desk is, a circulation staff member might send a circ student with the patron as well. Feel free to refer them to circ.

The Results are IN!

Thank you all for your participation in the Information Point's first General Satisfaction Survey. We had 24 responders out of a total of 50, so about a 50% response rate. This included all past and current Information Specialists, so I think that's a pretty good turn out.

The survey results are in and up on the web for you to see. I added them to the statistics page (now the aptly named Statistics and Surveys page).

Please take a look. I think by and large most folks are happy with what we're doing. Let's talk about these results in more detail though at our Summer B Team Meeting. I'll be setting a date for it soon. Watch this space. :)

Summer B up and running

Well Summer B is off to to a great start. Already folks are noticing a huge increase in questions at the desk.

To answer questions about the statistics, yes we are still using our old forms that we've been using. These forms give us a great breakdown of what kinds of questions we field at the information point. (But I am also reporting these statistics weekly, along with all the Access Services statistics, to Amanda up in administration, so they are getting counted in with the daily stats we're all doing.)

------------------------------

We have a few changes in the schedule for summer B:

Sonia has given us her all since the Information Point started. She finished her last shift in June, and we'll miss her!

Matthew Loving will be joining us on the desk as of this Friday. Thank you for volunteering Matthew!