Tag Archives: training

Student Training sessions

Please join us at one of these mandatory training sessions. We will deal with customer service primarily, but will probably throw in a few circ tidbits, as well. If you can’t make either session, please make up a good excuse and let your supervisor know.

Tuesday January 11th 1:30-3:00 in LIB 201
Friday January 14th 1:30-3:00 in LIB 201

Ref training!

Carrie will offer a reference training session for anyone interested (students included!) on Tuesday, August 3rd from 3-4 3:30-4:30 in room 145 of the Davis Family Library.

If you plan to attend, please review Research – How to Help in advance. Carrie will work through a few practice questions with you during the session.

Even if you don’t plan to attend, you should review Research – How to Help!

Reference training session

Carrie will be offering a reference training session for any interested circ staff or students on Friday, June 18th from 1:30-2:30 in LIB 105.  Learn what to do when someone asks you a research question.   Saying, “Sorry, I have NO idea how to help you find that article” is no fun.

If you plan to attend, please review Research – How to Help in advance. Carrie will work through a few practice questions with you during the session.

Even if you don’t plan to attend, you should review Research – How to Help!

Circ work comes first

I want to remind everyone that library work comes before personal work. 

We’ve been getting a higher number of patrons claiming an overdue item was returned to the circulation desk,  and not checked in.   I’ve followed up on several of these e-mails (time I could be using for other tasks.) and indeed the item was in the reserve area and not checked in.    Unfortunately, what this means is that personal work at the circulation desk is taking too much priority over circulation work.    I want to remind everyone that library work comes before personal work.      Secondly, I’m seeing too many reserves left sitting on the circulation desk and not checked in, this is a direct cause of improper check-in.   Remember that all returns are to be checked in promptly, as this is your responsibility as  a circulation assistant.

Points to Remember from Circ Training, 6/29/09

Todd asked me to take notes during the training and post them here. I’ll summarize what the presenters talked about and if you have any questions, ask me or comment below.

Maura:
Scheduling – use and refer to the Outlook calendar. If you need a sub, please post to the summer distribution list for one and alert the supervisor who normally works during that shift.
Blog – students should check the blog at the start of every shift – link located on desktops at each Circ desk
Wiki – great for finding procedures and workflows

Kellam:
Equipment – heavily used by Language Schools and sometimes also Bread Loaf during the summer.
–equipment is located at all 3 branches, and items circulate for 4 hours, 1 day, 7 days, or 14 days depending on what they are. Renewals are possible for all items (except faculty/staff laptops) as long as there is still ample supply of the item in question available for other borrowers. However, under no circumstances are loans allowed to be extended for the duration of the summer. In other years we’ve been able to do this, but due to shrinking inventory and budget cuts, we’re sorry but we can’t accommodate summer-long equipment requests anymore.
–don’t turn borrowers away if you don’t have what they need on hand. Check the other two branches to see if their equipment is available. Bring in supervisors to book equipment. Supervisors can also contact Media Services to see if their equipment inventory has what the borrower is looking for.
–when people ask about how to use equipment: direct them to go/equipment (“the greatest thing ever”–Maura) which has instruction manuals in pdf format which can be read online or printed
–remember to check all pieces of equipment at check-in and check-out (ie. read and follow the pop-up messages in every equipment record)
–equipment must be returned to the branch it came from; equipment cannot be transported in the courier bins like books, CDs, and DVDs can.
–new equipment for this summer: flip cams, Hebrew keyboards, portable P.A. systems

Rachel (with input from Kellam on BLSE)
ILL – green or pink bands; green can be taken out of the library, pink must stay in the library. In fact, when a patron returns a pink-band ILL to the desk and leaves without saying anything, it’s best to assume they’re NOT done with the item and it should go back on the hold shelf (assuming it’s due date has not passed).
–ILL can only be renewed by ILL staff intervention
–when checking one out, remember to change the due date in Millennium to what the ILL band says
–ILL can be shipped from Main to Armstrong, but between no other branches
NExpress – blue bands, usually a faster option than a recall or using ILL.
–NExpress can be renewed by a patron through My MidCat twice
–when checking one out, remember to use the due date generated by Millennium, and write it on the blue band
–NExpress can be shipped from Main to Davison (ie. Bread Loaf) and back, but between no other branches

Dan
Guests/Visitors – guests who have borrowing privileges may borrow books & government documents
Guests have access to computers (through the daily “pclab” password).
–they do NOT have privileges to borrow: equipment, movies, lockers & carrels, ILL & NExpress
–guest printing: through print card bought at Wilson Cafe, college Bookstore, or MiddXPress in McCullough. Each branch has 1-2 “guest printing computers” where guests can send print jobs. Guests then use the print release stations like students & faculty do.

Desktop Stats – to be clicked after every patron interaction which does not involve the actual circulating of materials (ie. check-ins, check-outs). Used by staff to document staff and student staff use during all hours we’re open.

Todd (with input from Kellam on BLSE)
Printing for students & faculty – all branches using print release stations – Middlebury username and password (same one used for Webmail, Banner, etc.) NOT the same one used by Bread Loaf students & faculty – they will need to activate their Midd accounts for this. Direct them to go/activate and look them up in Millennium to give them their ID #.
–copying is $.10 for b/w, $.50 for color. Color available in Main and Armstrong.
–Equitrac copy cards bought at “black box” in print rooms. Use $1 to get a card; then more money can be added onto that card.
–Faculty can use a department code (2) and their ID number to charge copies directly to their department.
–please report printer problems to supervisors/Helpdesk in a timely manner

Joseph
Emergency Procedures – please use part of your next shift to read over the Emergency Manual (there’s a copy in each branch). Ask your supervisor if you have questions about what’s in it.
–first aid kits are also available at each branch at the Circ Desk. Additional kits are available in Main at the Info Desk and in the Staff Room.

Steve
Mozio – new texting reference service, implemented at the end of spring semester. Text to # 66746 from any cell phone. Start your message with “midd” and then type your reference question. Reference librarians (or perhaps Circ or Helpdesk staff) will respond via text to your phone.

Is that it? Whew!

October Fall Training Meeting – Survey Results

Many, many thanks to those of you who took the time to respond to the survey.
And thanks for the feedback and the suggestions – we will take your thoughts into consideration in planning the next training meeting.
Total number of respondents: 23
Of those: 9 did not attend the meeting; 14 did
Comments: Did not attend because: Armstrong Library employee; schedule conflict; schedule Conflict: I had to attend a lecture by a visiting scholar; schedule conflict with fall sport;
Was the NExpress/ILL presentation useful? 5 yes; 2 no; 8 indifferent
Comments: I heard the same information as last training; I already knew all this, but i thought there should have been more emphasis on changing the due date when checking out, because i notice that’s what many people do wrong
Was the Reserves presentation useful? 9 yes; 6 indifferent
Comments: New things came up!
Was the Equipment presentation useful? 12 yes; 1 no; 2 indifferent
Comments: New things came up!
Was the Q and A and general discussion useful? 8 yes; 1 no; 6 indifferent
Was the FISH movie useful? 3 yes; 5 no; 6 indifferent
I had watched it in the last training; I’ve seen it before; it was entertaining…; didn’t really relate to work at the library–the type of costumer service I think is much different than the type of jobs they were doing on that movie.
11 additional suggestions/comments:
Can you please offer more than one session? That way more people will be able to fit it into their schedule. Thank you for your help!
Generally, students don’t seem to have a lot of free time on Monday
Paying students for attending would be motivation to attend; otherwise, not much incentive to be present
The snacks were great! i thought that this meeting was probably very useful to everyone who works at the main circ desk, but i don’t usually deal with much of what we talked about in the meeting since i work at the music library. this is also my second year working, and this information would have been helpful when i started, but not so much now that i’ve been there a while
Maybe have separate meetings for Main Library and Branches. Thanks!
Length of the meeting was good. Doing student training is good, but needs to be kept to a say bi-monthly meeting so that students do not feel like it’s a time burden
I think this was a good time…the food was tasty. Maybe have a sheet go around before the meeting (like during the week before) so that students can indicate what/if anything they want to talk about – instead of just open time for questions that haven’t been thought through – that can go on and take up people’s time
I think that it would be a great idea to do a training session focused on all the neat things there are on the LIS website and throughout the library that we, as workers, and also, just generally patrons, don’t know about. I would love to be able to tell a patron a neat way to look up books/music, or a cool feature on our website or in the library that they didn’t know. I’m sure that there are tons of really neat things that the library does/has that we don’t know about, and I would love to learn about all of them.
I think you should take anonymous circ student questions/comments before the meeting and then answer them during the meeting – so people have some time to think about questions and submit them, maybe over a week or two, and also because some might be shy.

Let me know if you have any questions – or additional comments/suggestions. Feel free to comment on the blog – or email me if you’d prefer anonymity.
Elin