User Services Weekly Report
Date: 18 Nov 2009
Workgroups(s); Circulation Services – Circulation, Reserves and Stacks
Highlights:
• 6-month staff performance reviews – all completed
• 24/7 planning; scheduling
• Staff schedules; Minimal coverage parts of the week: Main – mid-days, Reserves and Main Circ on Mondays, Main Circ on Fridays
• Student staff: many student sub requests but almost all of them filled in a timely fashion; some creative juggling for schedules; decrease in incidents of missed shifts due to illness; scheduling for Thanksgiving, Winter Term; starting to plan for exam shifts
• Book sale this week – busy first day of the sale – lots of sales
• Web Team: Drupal training; IA; wiki; blog; cross-area content discussions; website work – borrowing and Music pages; meeting on places/spaces/borrowing; met with Mike and Jeff; Alex presented new blog theme features/design; planning for team self-assessment; presenting at all-lis staff meeting
• Curricular Technology Team: website work, IA
• Digital Archives Team: working towards December deadline: guidelines for approving new digital projects – crafting a policy including material from previous digital committee reports from 2002 and 2004
• Self-booking of loaner equipment – exploring options, system functionalities and loan rules; filled out self booking worksheet for Innovative, met with Systems staff
• Main: A bit more activity than usual Sunday; busy evenings, mid-day, afternoons
• Room reservations: increase in afternoon and evening room reservation requests
• Film Screenings: screenings steady with fewer gaffes this week
• Fun with macros tool! (AutoHotKey)
• Mill Circ: testing various blocks for reserves/equipment/recalls + renewals issue
• Armstrong: Shelving maps returned from Gov docs. These were (non-topo) maps we found over the summer that were not bar-coded or cataloged; steady ILL; print release station problem fixed
• Busy day-to-day activity at both Armstrong and Main, little extra time for any projects; activity peaking as we near the end of the semester
• Reserves: Winter Term – requests and processing; thinking about end of term preparations/workflow; use stats for items on reserve; ratio of items on reserve per course to number of times items have circulated; circs per item to guide future course planning?; using new macros system for some reserve processing; quickie update to EReserves Copyright Clearance online form to reflect 2010-2012
• Billing and replacement of long unreturned materials and processing refunds for materials that have been returned; sent statement of charges
• Loaner equipment: equipment in high demand: camcorders, firewire drives, lcd projectors, plus a run on digital cameras
• Stacks/Shelving: routine re-shelving; in-library use of materials on the upswing as we near end of term
• NExpress stuff – troubleshooting missing, too long reports, items without requests attached
• Peak of carts of materials (new and repairs) at Main
• Weekend: Moderate traffic through the evening; searching monthly list; book sweeps; printer rooms cleaned; Sat – Very busy through 5:30/6:00 pm. Three of us at the Front Desk; lots of people in library and among carrels; things more moderate after 6:00 pm; rainy weather seems to = busy activity in library
• Attended cloud computing web seminar
• Updated library hours – Thanksgiving break
Challenges
• Re-shelving carts with errors
• Printer problems at Arms
• Heavy plotter use for poster session on Wednesday this week.
• Heavy microfilms use for class projects – students unfamiliar with technology and format
• Increase in false gate alarms
• Reserve DVD checked out to faculty member and kept over weekend — needed for two other courses
• Confusion over media loan periods for faculty borrowers