Special hours for July 3rd and 4th

Tuesday July 3rd we'll close at 6pm and Wednesday July 4th we will be closed.

General Orientations for Summer B and Fall coming up

You can find the dates and times for General Orientations here. No registration is required, students can just come.

Ares trainings for Faculty

Throughout the next two months there are faculty trainings for Ares (the new course reserves system) every Monday and Wednesday. Please be advised that half of these trainings are at Marston and the other half are at West. Faculty members may come to the circulation desk at Library West in error, please direct them to the Marston Science Library as necessary.

The training dates and locations are as follows:

Marston Science Library Room 308 (10AM-11AM)

June: 27th
July: 2nd, 9th, 11th, 16th, 18th, 23rd, 25th, 30th

Library West Room 211 (10AM-11AM)

August: 1st, 6th, 8th, 13th, 15th, 20th, 22nd, 27th, 29th

Intercession hours

We'll close the Information Point during Intercession. We'll be back to staff the desk during normal hours starting July 2nd.

Ares goes live Friday!

Friday June 22nd Ares will go live. All Summer A, B & C classes that were already up in the old system have been set up in Ares and should be ready for viewing.

If you haven't had an opportunity to attend one of the Ares training sessions there is one more left on Tuesday, June 26th, 10-11am in Library West Room 419.

Change in the Ares training room for tonight

Ares trainings are still available. If you're planning to come to the one tonight at 5:30 the location has changed and is going to be in West Room 211.

Tuesday, June 5th, 10-11am in Library West Room 419
Sunday, June 10th, 3-4pm in Library West Room 211
Tuesday, June 12th, 10-11am in Library West Room 419
Thursday, June 14th, 5:30pm-6:30pm in Library West Room 211
Tuesday, June 19th, 10-11am in Library West Room 419
Tuesday, June 26th, 10-11am in Library West Room 419

The survey is up!

The long awaited General Satisfaction survey is up and ready. I've emailed all the current and former Information Specialists the link (the survey is hosted by Survey Monkey) and I do hope you'll take the few minutes to answer the 16 questions. The survey is completely anonymous and I'll tabulate all the responses to share at our TBA Summer B Team Meeting.

Thank you for participating!

Summer A Team Meeting Minutes

At our meeting Friday we discussed the following:

New staff joining us on the desk
Starting in Summer A: Chris Templeton, Melissa Ware, Kenny Herniman, Todd Chisholm, and Janice Kahler.

Starting in Summer B: Michelle Foss and Matt Loving

Statistics
We looked at the new statistics from May.

Also we talked about how in July everyone will be taking daily statistics individually throughout the libraries, but we will continue to take our Information Point stats like we have been. I'll be reporting these to administration for the Information Point, so the stats you take on the Infopoint should not be included in your individual statistics that you report with your department.

Trainings
The Aleph v18 Circulation trainings are finished. The associated PowerPoint slides have been put up on the website. They're in the Circulation Manual so you probably will have to be at a staff computer to be able to view them.

Ares trainings are this month. Be sure to attend one. They're to be hands-on and Ares is very different from ERes. Bring any general questions you have about course reserves too!

Trades
ALA is coming up. If you need coverage please ask now.
Be sure to let me know when you arrange a trade so that I can mark it on the calendar.

We discussed Jana's using a wiki for the Ask A Librarian trade calendar. A few folks are familiar with it, and we talked about the possibility of using that model for Infopoint trades. No change will be made right now, but if folks have a chance to look into that, we might want to explore it in the future.

We talked about what to do if you need last minute coverage in an emergency. Call Angela first, but if you can't reach her call the main Access Services number 273-2525 and let someone there know. Even if you have to leave a message on that line there is now a receptionist who will pick up the message quickly and let circulation know that you can't make your shift. This will be especially important when the traffic picks up in Summer B and Fall.

Survey
The survey we talked about last Spring has turned into two separate surveys.

A General Satisfaction Survey will come out soon and be emailed to you as a Survey Monkey survey.

Later in the summer, before Fall trainings begin, an anonymous self-assessment survey (also on Survey Monkey) will help us set up the training sessions needed.

Additional notes:
Circulation staff will put a desk schedule on the big silver box so that you can see the names of the folks working the desk.

Ares online videos

The online videos (about one minute each) are now available to work in both IE and Firefox. To get to the videos go to: https://ufl.ares.atlas-sys.com/videos.html

The most important ones for us to watch are:
How to Create your account (under Student and Faculty Videos)
How to search for and add your class (under Student Videos)
How to view items for your class (under Student Videos)

To watch them in Firefox, be sure to click on the Quicktime version.

Aleph v18 Circulation trainings are online

Matthew has linked up the PowerPoints for the Aleph v.18 Circ Module trainings. I've added them to the Infopoint website on the training page. Being that they're "in" the circ manual you may only be able to actually connect to them while on campus.

Updated Ares training dates

A Sunday training session has been added to the mix. So to update, these are the Ares trainings coming up:

Tuesday, June 5th, 10-11am in Library West Room 419
Sunday, June 10th, 3-4pm in Library West Room 211
Tuesday, June 12th, 10-11am in Library West Room 419
Thursday, June 14th, 5:30pm-6:30pm in Library West Room 419
Tuesday, June 19th, 10-11am in Library West Room 419
Tuesday, June 26th, 10-11am in Library West Room 419

Dry erase boards, markers and more

We found out today that room 401 (a two person room) does not have a dry erase board in it. To our knowledge all the other rooms have one though.

If a patron asks, we do have dry erase markers in the drawer right next to the Information Point. They don't checkout, just ask that they return it with the key when they're finished. Many of the rooms will have dry erase markers left in there as well (from when they forget to return them) and they should all have erasers.

Also in that drawer you'll see these little foil packets with phone cleaning wipes in them. You can use these on the keyboard, the phone if you feel the need, but also you can give one to patrons who want to clean off the headphones when they borrow them.

The Ares training we've all been waiting for is here!

Ares is set to go up on June 22nd during the Summer intercession. I've taken a peek at it, and it is completely different than ERes. If you haven't had the opportunity to attend a training yet, please come to one of the following sessions. Natalie is planning on it being a hands-on training this time, so even if you were able to attend one of the earlier overview sessions you might want to come to this as well.

A few of the differences I've personally noticed so far:

* Every student will have to create an Ares account before they can use the system.
* Each student will have to add their classes to their account before they can view the reserve items for their classes.
* If we want to be able to search for a reserve item, to find a call number for example, we'll have to create an Ares account (or use the sample account set up) and add the student's class to our own account.

It sounds like we'll be doing a lot of instruction with students and possibly faculty to help them start using the new system.

The available training sessions are:

Tuesday, June 5th, 10-11am in Library West Room 419
Tuesday, June 12th, 10-11am in Library West Room 419
Thursday, June 14th, 5:30pm-6:30pm in Library West Room 419
Tuesday, June 19th, 10-11am in Library West Room 419
Tuesday, June 26th, 10-11am in Library West Room 419

Hope to see you there!

Online requests for Graduate and Faculty Carrels

Applications are now being accepted for the Fall 2007 - Summer 2008 school year. See the page online here for the answers to most questions.

To access the online application, patrons go to the main library page and click "Online Requests" at the very top of the screen. From there they can scroll down to "Library Study Rooms."

Desk closing for Intercession

We will be closing the Information Point during the week of Intercession from June 25th to June 29th. I know it seems far away, but folks have already been looking at making trades for that week.

We'll look into whether we'll close for Summer/Fall Intercession later in the summer.

Course Reserves system down

The Course Reserves system (ERes) is down. Docutek is working on the problem now and they hope to have it working by lunchtime today.

In the meantime, if a student needs an item from Hard Copy Reserves, you can find it either by course number and professor name if it is owned by the instructor, or if it is a library owned item and they know the title, you can look it up in the catalog and then find it on the shelf by call number.

If you need help, you can ask the circulation folks on the desk to see if they can assist as well.

---------------------
UPDATE 10:40am

Course Reserves is back up and working. Thank you for your patience!

Students not enrolled during summer

If a student is not enrolled during the summer we refer requests for library access (e.g. card activations) to the circulation staff. But I thought it would be helpful for us to know the policies the circulation staff are following with regards to these patrons.

Click here for Graduate Students.


Click here for Undergraduate Students.

Circulation Desk table completely changed

You'll notice when you come to the Information Point that the table behind the circulation desk looks a LOT different! We've purchased headphones for the patrons to use, and (for the moment at least) they are housed on that back table.

The things that were displaced from the table (the stack of black boxes for example) are now back in the reserves area (near the 24 hour hold shelf).

If the arrangement changes I'll let you know here.

But the cool thing is that we have a lot more headphones to lend out to patrons now!

Food and Drink Pilot

In case you missed the email from Carol:

For the summer, we are permitting snack foods such as granola bars, chips, crackers, cookies, candy, nuts, and small fruits and vegetables throughout Library West along with covered drinks. Other foods must still be consumed in the study area across from Starbucks or outside. Staff who observe inappropriate foods (hot entrees, salad, pizza, soup, and anything hot, messy, or odorous) should ask the patron to take the food to the area across from Starbucks or outside the building.

Several things are being done to advertise the project. There will be posters at the entrance, a notice on the web page, and a press release. A survey will be distributed to gather user reaction to the pilot project. Copies of the survey will be available at the entrance, the circulation desk, and the research assistance desk. Please encourage library users to complete the survey. Surveys will be returned to the Circulation Desk and the Research Assistance Desk. Amanda Humphries will gather the surveys each day during the lunch hour.

Also, Barbara Hood has designed some new heavy paper coasters as a way to keep our table surfaces neater. These will be distributed throughout the building, and they are certain to be popular.

Here is some of the project publicity.

The surveys are at the desk (there is a stack right at the Infopoint) and if you have someone turn one in to you, there is an orange folder on the table behind the circ desk (in the black stacked boxes where you put the ILL orange slips).

Public Printing Patchy Today

Public printing will be unavailable intermittently from 5:00 pm until 9:00 pm on Friday, May 18th. Systems will be working with Xerox and Equitrac to install updates to their server.

Remember that students can go to any of the Circa labs to print, or to the Reitz Union for free printing.