User Services Weekly Report
Date: 21 Oct 2009
Name: Elin Waagen
Workgroups(s); Circulation Services – Circulation, Reserves and Stacks
Highlights:
Busy mid-term activity continues
6-month reviews/performance discussions underway
Circ staff meeting with Dean for annual one-on-one discussions
Lots of room reservation activity
Homecoming activity
All-LIS staff meeting
Staffing/schedules: Great team effort training and adjusting schedules and workflows – ongoing work in progress
Mill Circ: exploring self-booking; new passwords; new on-the-fly templates (and documentation etc.); investigated renewal options/block to facilitate self-management of library accounts; tweaking system – web requesting options
Student employees: training quizzes complete; results posted and corrections posted on Circ blog
LIS Website Team: Drupal Training; borrowing content in wiki; developing IA
CT Team – working on web stuff; using LIS blog to share activity
DA Team – visit from Web Team & discussion of the place of digital collections on the new Library web site
Main: Busy evenings b/c of midterms, heavy equipment use, still a few carrels being given out; continues quiet on Sundays
Keeping up with busy daily activity at Arms and Main – very little time to work on projects
Music: Quiet activity
Armstrong: Lots of request processing – scanning, scanning, scanning
Reserves: still coming in almost daily at Arms – an unusual pattern; major review of all documentation, procedures, workflow etc. prior to staff retirement
Exploring periodical binding workflow options for Armstrong with P&P
Stacks: clearing reserved carrels/lockers project – over the past 3 weeks, 62 carrels sampled, 18 yield one or more “item avail”; 26 stand-alone lockers, 13 yield one or more “item avail”; expanding support to and interaction with front desk activity;
Billing and replacement of long unreturned materials continues…
Equipment: Coordinating special equipment requests (with Helpdesk) for classroom computing needs
Keeping students busy with search project – monthly missing/lost/long gone list
NExpress – following up on institutional “too-long” in transit; paged etc. lists
Challenges
Student employees: “no show” at Arms
Reserves support with reduced staffing; 2-week processing time?
Screening of materials available only in LD and 3/4inch VHS format
Loaner equipment: FS Dell laptop claims returned by staff member — continuing to search and follow up with borrower; troubleshooting Laser disc player questions
Sharp increase of study room reservations, as well as students booking rooms for 4 hours and coming repeatedly throughout the week to reserve rooms for 4 hours; time consuming; some of the students are developing a possessive attitude towards getting a study room
Lunch coverage at Main and Arms
ILL renewals – different process for user and staff workflow (compared to Midd owned and NExpress renewals)
Staff concerns about College and LIS staffing reductions
Shift of “info Desk” activity to Circ