User Services Weekly Report
Date: 16 Dec 2009
Workgroups(s); Circulation Services – Circulation, Reserves and Stacks
Stats:
24/7 highlights:
• Gate and head counts overall closer to Fall 08 levels than the huge drop we saw in Spring 09.
• Higher numbers than expected towards the end of exams, likely as a result of exams being compacted into one week.
• Lowest night: Sun-Mon Nov 29-30 (1st night) – 152 gate, 137 head
• Highest night: Thurs-Fri Dec 10-11 (2nd to last night) – 621 gate, 603 head
• Most surprising stat: gate count at 5am on Wed-Thurs Dec 9-10 (3rd to last night): 110 people, up from 78 at 4am, down again to 71 at 6am.
Highlights:
• Last week of classes and exams – end of term “everything”
• Cookies and snacks have helped keep us going day and night – thanks to Circ bakers and shoppers!
• Reshelving, reshelving, reshelving: Circ staff, Circ on-call staff, Stacks (dept of 1) and small team of Circ student employees tackling the flood of returns; thanks to LIS volunteers who are helping re-shelve
• End-of-term insanity: Returns, returns, returns – still arriving; book drops overflowing at start of week
• End-of/between semester check-lists: lots to do! Reviewing/editing for relevance and efficiency
• Student employees: 24-7/exams schedule went well, few gaps; 24/7 pay cards filled out and submitted to SEO; J-term schedule at Main filled all but 2 gaps: Mon and Thur 12-2; small but wonderful team of students helping out with front desk, re-shelving, reserve and other projects
• Reserves: Adding reserves for W10; “taking down” reserves processing at all 3 branches ; winter term reserves slowly coming in, very few so far at Arms; met to discuss J-term reserves support with fewer staff and one upcoming 2 week absence; gathered Fall reserve stats; removed Music items from reserve; removed “on reserve” item messages from materials at all branches; end-of-term Reserve work: removing courses (and attached items) in Mill; removing personal copies from Mill; sending items back to branches; meeting with Systems re: MIDCAT shopping cart capabilities; preparing for W10 Reserves duties in staff absence; reviewing end-of-term process/procedures
• Armstrong: ILL, Nexpress requests still steady; the week ended on a busy note, busy on Friday; re-shelving; anticipate slowing down the rest of the week
• Main: Quiet Sunday, steady returns but nothing out of control; very busy end of exam week, continued good attendance by overnight students, many sub shifts, small cadre of student workers signing up for this week’s shifts
• Main – weekend: quite busy on both Fri & Sat with returns as well as Reserves and DVD’s. Closing on Sat – last day of 24/7 – went smoothly
• Music: No student employees scheduled this week
• Stacks: Books, books, books – the name of the game as everyone knows. All shelves in re-shelving/recently returned area full and overflowing – had to double up and use very top shelves
• Carrel & locker sweep, key maintenance
• Hold Shelf clean-up; cancelled requests available in NExpress; cleared/cleaned hold-shelves
• Setting goals: Web team, Digital Archives team, Educational Technology team, User Services, Circ Services
• Staff schedules: Lots of flexing/stretching to ensure Circ and Reserve coverage/services; kudos to the Circ team!
• Web Team: Drupal site build-out activity – fast and furious; shared content; wiki documentation build-out; blog tweaks/enhancements; web forms; assessment; unifying banners
• Curricular Technology Team: Team self assessment, goals
• Digital Archives Team: Researching other libraries’ digital collection policies: each team member taking one school to research and summarize for group, finished up discussion of group assessment
• Mill Circ: Innovative has just installed a small upgrade to Millennium – we went from version 2009A 1.0 to 2009A 1.1; online self-booking under development; new loan rule, LRDT line for carrel key booking; self-booking of thesis carrels through Millennium system under development; Ilsley Library support – created new itype, loan rule for Ilsley 21-day equipment
• Loaner equipment: equipment mostly back, maintenance and inventory underway
• Updated library hours – hurray!
• All-LIS staff meeting – goals sharing/critiquing
• Monthly Circ meeting
Challenges
• Main – 242K the only printer that held up through the weekend. Students were reporting that none of the Sunderland printers were working; continued printer problems, black ink all out (it’s on order) for color printer,
• End-of-term increase in volume = increase in check-in errors
• Last minute schedule gaps in student coverage towards the end of the exam period
• Keeping Main Library clean during exams (thanks to the Main Library cleaning team for their hard work to try to keep it as clean as possible under 24/7)
• Hold-shelf – clearing form Fall semester – +20 NExpress books not checked in at Midd; Midd books with available status; ILL’s past due date
• When is it OK to say NO to ILL requests at Arms?
• Fewer staff to provide Reserve support
• Fewer staff to provide re-shelving support
• Self-check out of order
• Seriously overdue books, library materials; books returned in damaged condition