The Pilot of the Week

This week Circulation is doing a pilot escort service. (I just couldn't resist)

Effective immediately, at the request of the directors, Circulation staff will be sending a staff member (or student) with each group when they check out a key in order to check the room for vandalism. They will also maintain a list of patrons who have checked out the rooms.

To manage this, there will be one station specifically designated for group study rooms only. This station will not be the Information Point. So during this week's pilot, if a patron is interested in checking out a room they will need to go to the designated station.

The revised policy soon will be placed online at:
http://www.uflib.ufl.edu/ps/circ/studyroompolicy.html

Please encourage students to fill out a comment card about the new policy/procedure.

"I just want something fun to read"

With the idea of promoting recreational reading, we have designed 8 bookmarks that highlight some "classic" books students might enjoy reading for fun. Even if students don't find that particular book on the shelf, they might find other items in that area that they would enjoy reading.

The bookmarks are in the acrylic brochure holders between the escalators and on either side of the New Books shelves. Feel free to grab some and distribute them as you like. If you notice they're running out or you think of other ways to use them let Angela know.

New Laptops for Faculty

You'll notice there are three new laptops in the laptop cart this week. These are for faculty to check out. The old laptops are only able to be checked out by students, and these new ones are only able to be checked out by faculty.

If you have a faculty member who needs to submit reserves requests or ILL requests you can suggest they can check out a laptop as an option. The faculty laptops have bright orange copies of the policy taped to the top.

That reminds me, late last week we also attached copies of the laptop policies (in white) to the student laptops. This way you no longer have to enclose a copy of the policy every time they check out a laptop. Still, do make sure to tell them the due time and offer to write it down on a scrap piece of paper (or the policy sheets we have left).

A new tidbit I learned at the ILL training

Maybe you knew this already, but I was happy to learn this at the recent ILL training and thought I'd share.

We have a lot of things that show up in our catalog that are not located in the Smathers libraries. Sometimes a patron is looking for something that is only at Mead, Law or an IFAS station. I found out that if that is the case, they CAN ILL the item. The only exception is Health Science. If the item is at HSCL they'll have to go there to check it out. But if the item is only at Law, Mead, one of the IFAS centers or somewhere else, we can suggest they use ILL. Good to know!

Sample Statistics for SelfCheck

Starting Sunday, February 10th you'll notice a new statistics sheet at the circulation desk.

These statistics are to show how many circulation transactions could be handled by a SelfCheck machine and how many would still require a staff person's help. We also need to continue tracking each Reference Question we answer for other library-wide statistics.

Basically for any customer coming to the desk, first ask yourself if they needed a person at all. If not, mark as "NO staff needed." If they did need a person, tally mark once in the "ANY staff needed" column AND tally mark as needed to indicate how many reference questions they had (if any).

Each stats sheet is for just one day, so there will be a new one each day. we're keeping these stats for 3 weeks only and then we'll be back to our normal ones. Thanks so much for helping us gather these sample statistics! If you have any questions please ask the circ staff on duty, or you can call back or email Angela also.

Ergonomic seating at the Information Point

So do you guys think this new kind of seating would be worth having on the Information Point? One hour a week could make all the difference!

(If the link above isn't showing the video clip try here.)

Thanks to Cool Librarian for the link.

Microfilm on Reserve

I've had two students already looking for microfilm put on reserve for Professor Ziegler's history class. The microfilm is NOT in Ares. It's shelved back next to the professor owned books by newspaper title and issue. The student will tell you the title, month and year and you'll find it on the shelf.