Monthly Archives: September 2012

Circ meeting 9-26-12

UPDATES:
*Getting students paid has been a trial
*New plotter at Armstrong next month
*Very smooth start-up for Fall, terrific carrel day, reserves work has been great
*new microfilm machines will be great, computers will be upgraded hopefully in October

PENALTY POINTS DISCUSSION:
*Dan confirmed that circsup initials ARE required to override the block on student computers
*Dan will look into: settings to display the penalty points, visual indication of block, ability to manually adjust, recalled NExpress items
*Once in place, we will send an initial overdue notice indicating penalty points, then a billing notice after x amount of time. (One week?)

CIRC SUBS
*Down one with Mark gone, Kim leaving in May
*Post soon to hire two new ones
*Dan will check with HR about hiring existing students

NExpress STICKERS:
*We are hoping to start using these on outgoing NExpress.
*Rachel will figure out a workflow with Armstrong on how to manage those.

Equipment Review for Fall 2012 Student Circ Staff

Welcome back to our Circulation Student Staff members!

To ease your transition back into the Circ swing of things, this is a quick reminder on the check in procedure for our media equipment items.

No check in required: Do NOT check in most media items. Please place media equipment items on the red cart when they are returned to the Circ Desk; no need for any check-in action on Millennium.  Supervisors will do all of these check ins.

We have two Canon XA10 camcorders in our media collection. These are open to anyone (all patrons including students) for check out for a one-day loan period. DO NOT extend a loan for anyone without checking with a supervisor.
We have added iPads to our collection, and we have 2 Kindles for borrowing; these are two-week loan periods for faculty/staff members only. (One Kindle Fire is available for student circulation, also for 14 days.) NO CHECK IN REQUIRED.

We also have new HD Flash Canon FS200  camcorders; one-day loan periods to all patrons. PLEASE REMEMBER TO AVOID CHECKING IN THESE CAMERAS; SIMPLY CARRY THEM TO THE RED CART.

We have new LCD projectors for students. PLEASE DO NOT CHECK THESE IN; CARRY OVER TO THE RED CART.

There is a VHS player in the media cabinet and we have a DVD recorder for anyone to borrow. No check-in required.

Check in required: Do check in student laptops, power chargers, DVDs (notice and confirm whether the DVD is inside), headphones, digital voice recorders, calculators.  We have new MacBook Pro for Retina Display chargers in the bottom left drawer (#2) next to the student computer nearest the wall clock. The usual MacBook Pro chargers are also in that drawer, as well as in the Mac cabinet. When possible during a quiet period, please turn off the student laptops as they get returned.

If you have any type of question regarding our equipment, please ask me.
Thank you!

 

Ebooks on reserve

So, you know how I spend all of my waking hours these days placing books and media on reserve in Millennium so students can find their course materials via MIDCAT? Along with print books and media, we are now adding ebooks to the items associated with a reserves list in MIDCAT. Please see Prof. Williams’s PSCI 0430 as an example of what this looks like. Similar to media items, ebooks are identified as such in the title (via a bracketed “[electronic resource]”). Likewise, their call numbers end in “eb”, as DVDs end in “D” and BluRays end in “B” etc.

Please familiarize yourselves with how to access ebooks in MIDCAT, as our Circ students and patrons will surely have questions about it. Rebekah’s blog post will get you started, and here is a more detailed Q&A. I think our borrowers will be delighted to find that ebooks can be used by multiple people at one time, and are not limited to the usual two-hour reserve period that restricts our print reserves.

Please leave comments or questions below!

In-house equipment

As discussed in a recent circ meeting, I have changed all of the in-house equipment from a 4-hour loan that everyone ignored to a day-long, non-overnight loan. In other words, any equipment that used to be due back in 4 hours is now due back at closing. This includes headphones, laptops, and chargers. The hope is that this will cut down on a lot of useless email notifications. Hourly reserve loans are still hourly and strict. As always, if you notice anything weird with due dates or times, let me know as messing with the loan rules is always dicey.