September 18, 2000
Library News and Information
This is a long one! Please Do Read this...
Students will soon have the convenience of paying for library fines and lost books with a credit or bank check card. The credit card terminal & printer is already connected. It takes the place of the re-sensitizer on top of the lost & found drawer, and the re-sensitizer has been moved to the top of the reserve drawers. Out-going mail is on top of Reserves. The search basket is to the right of the desk calendar. Hope this doesn't throw you all off
The full-time staff (Bill, Anne, Eileen, Donna, Bob & MAT) will train on Wednesday the 20th and work on hashing out policy issues. I hope that will be able to start training all student workers on September the 25th. I will probably be able to train some people during their regular shifts, but if some shifts are perpetually "too busy" to have time to train, then I will make appointments.
So that I can keep track of who has been trained, I'll put up a check-off sheet next to the credit card terminal.
I know that ya'll have been great about de-sensitizing RESERVE items that go out, but have ya'll thought about re-sensitizing items when they come in? Please try to re-sensitize the RESERVE materials.
Many of you have not met Anne Womack, our Associate Director, or Eileen Crawford, our Cataloger. Eileen works reference at the Infodesk station on Thursdays. Anne's office is next to Donna's in the Judaica room area. Both of them will be at the Pizza Party on Friday. Please introduce yourselves if you have the opportunity.
This may have crept up on some of you unaware. I have added "assignments" for particular shifts. Some tasks hit particular shifts. For example, it's logical for the 9 a.m. shift to pick up books from Central on weekdays. Other tasks, such as checking for ILL arrivals, can be moved around. Please check the desk calendar to make sure that you are not omitting a desk task for your shift. Also, please split the work and be open to trading parts. For example, on a clean-up, one person may go retrieve books and another may "use item" and shelve. Please recognize that one part of your team may eventually get sick of shelving.
Materials in Elevators and Items Taken Out of Divinity
This one caught me by surprise. I had not realized that there was some question about whether or not items that have not been checked out can be taken out of the Divinity Library.
The rule of thumb is that anything that is taken out of the Divinity Library should be checked out. Anyone leaving the 1st and 2nd floors is leaving the Divinity Library. Therefore, items people take on the elevator to Central should be checked out.
There are, of course, problems. One obvious one is that there is no way to police the elevator, as there is no security gate at the entrance. Two, there are times that I purposely make exceptions for service reasons. For example, when people want to photocopy Divinity reference materials just before close, when I have already turned the copier off, I send them up the elevator with the reference materials and ask them to return the items to the Central Circulation desk. When our film reader-printer has been down, I have sent people up to the 6th floor with microfilm that was not checked out, and the request, "Please don't leave the film on 6 -- please bring it back to us." However, the ideal thing is to always checkout the material to the patron.
Some of you may be wondering, why can't Central check out our books? Central can, but Central is not supposed to.
The computer will check out item types that libraries have in common. For example, Central and Divinity obviously both have books, so the computer can check out books. Central has "Leisure Books" that Divinity cannot check out. Divinity has "Videos" that Central cannot check out. So it is just an accident that Central can check out Divinity books, and not their being allowed by policy.
Circ Desk Monitors and Computers
The problems with the keyboards, card-readers, and computers have been repeatedly reported to Netfix. Library Technology believes that new computers may take care of some of the problems. We are due to get new computers and flat-screen monitors for all the staff computers in Circulation. I have no idea when this will happen, as Library Technology is very short staffed.
Just an early heads up about holidays. Typically holidays like Thanksgiving run Saturday to Saturday, and Friday folks are expected to work or swap. When the Library is open on Break Hours, Evening/Weekend Supervisors are required to work some holidays. I will, however, open up hours to anyone who plans on staying for all or part of the holiday. Those are "sign-up" hours. The more hours that folks sign-up, the less pressure for the supervisors to cover. There does have to be a student supervisor to close if a full-time staff person (Sandra) is not available.
I will be providing "time off" request forms for the supervisors (and Kesler/PSA) to fill out for the holidays. That way they will not have to depend on my easily disrupted short-term memory, or crowded e-mail folders. More about Holiday stuff in October.
I actually do notice lateness, but I generally do not talk to people about lateness unless 1) it happens repeatedly, 2) it happens to someone who is a back-up for me in the morning, or 3) it causes problems for the other desk student on schedule.
I trust you to make your own modifications in your time sheets if you are 15 minutes late or more. OR you can come a bit early to another shift and make it up without changing your sheet. But if you do that, you may want to ask me for something specific to do, since it gets so crowded and confusing if there are more than 2 people standing behind the desk.
Injustice and the Friday Shift
The CWS rules are that students may not work more than 20 hours a week. Of course, Financial Aid would not know if you were regularly working 20+ hours in an off-campus job, but you can bet that eventually Financial Aid will catch all your Vanderbilt hours.
Even though Scott Fritz wanted to work here in Divinity, he is working 20 hours/wk at another campus job. Financial Aid kicked back his Divinity time sheet. He had to make a choice, and since we cannot offer the pay that he makes at his other job, he chose the other job.
I am partly the bad guy, as other staff members had suggested that Financial Aid might not be able to enforce their "no". However, I felt that the Library had to play by the rules on this one.
From 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. there is only one desk person scheduled. If anyone is interested in all or part of these hours, please let me know. Under this circumstance, a first year student can go over 10 hours or other students may pick up additional hours.
The new "generic" login is available so that you can have access to word processing when not at the Circulation Desk. The Login is "DIVGEN" and the password is, for now anyway, "access".
You have to use the collection development area during times that it is not locked and alarmed. If it is locked and alarmed, you will have to use Garland or another VU computer lab I expect that as people use this option, problems will come up and further procedures will be needed. Stay tuned..
Now that you all know your jobs and and have experience, I am taking submissions for the funniest-most-unprofessional-desk-quip-that-I-promise-never-ever-to-use-in-real-life. I don't know what the winner will get, but I'll figure it out along the way.
Here are samples:
(on credit card fine payment) Yes, our deal with the devil is now complete and you too can be charged 14.99% interest on your $1.60 library fine!
(on phone) Can I take a message? She says she's not in.
YOU HAVE COMPLETED THE VERY LONG NEWSLETTER!
SUCCESS!