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.
