Scenic Painting camp

August Children's Programs

Hello everyone,

There will not be any children's programs during the month of August; i.e., storytime, babytime, toddler playgroup, etc. Programming will resume the Tuesday after Labor Day - September 8. We will then have Babytime at 11:00 on Mondays, Toddler Playgroup at 11:00 on Tuesdays, and Storytime at 11:00 on Wednesdays. There will only be ONE program per day.

Carol

John's obligatory vacation note

Hi all,

I can't go away without leaving a note.

I'll do my best to bring some of the cool Boston weather home with me. Patrick is in charge till Monday and then Carol takes over till I get back on the 24th.

Thanks again for all you do to make Stella the coolest library in explored space.

John

Laptops

David from IT says we need to shut down the laptops properly and it should help with their performance. When someone returns a laptop, it may be because of a dead battery, so the laptop did not get shut down properly. We need to start checking for that and if the laptops are still on, instead of just holding down the power button, we need to go into the start menu and shut down from there.

David also advised us to hold down the power button for 7 seconds when turning on the laptop before we give it to the customer.

Two Things

We now have Downtown Aquarium tickets!! Please give each child two tickets since we no longer have the circus tickets.

Next Week's craft on 7/21: We will make jellyfish, starfish, and decorate some fish. Ages 2 - 7

Carol

New ILL receipt form

All,

I've added a new Google Docs version of the ILL Receipt form. The link is right under the ILL log link. All you'll need to do is copy and paste information from the ILL log. You may need to make a minor correction for formatting. It will be much faster and easier than writing all that out.

Thanks,
John

Summer Reading Prizes

Downtown Aquarium tickets are on the way. Today I received about 40 Astros tickets as well as some James Coney Island tickets-- we won't get any more. The circus tickets are gone, and no more will be coming. We still have a large number of Whataburger coupons.

I realize some patrons are upset, but we had a limited number of incentives to begin with. Thank you all for your help and patience-- we're on the downhill slope of SRP!

Carol

Research Reservation Kiosk

I think it would be in our best interest, for the time being, to leave the sign on that research reservation kiosk and do all of the reserving from the reference desk. It inevitably messes up at some point every single day and we end up with 4 or 5 people on the reservation list that it will not assign to an open computer. We are then stuck trying to find where these people are and informing them we are going to have to delete their reservation. This usually results in angry customers and makes the library look incompetent in a way.

ILL logs

When entering ILLs in the log, please designate the type of item (CD or DVD) after the title if applicable. Also, check inside the case to make sure the disc is there.

Thanks
Renee

Statistics

For clarification on the stats we need to track...

These stats all go into the Holds count, Volunteers and P Count spreadsheet that can be found on the blog under reference on the right hand side.

The p count needs to be taken every morning and put into the blog before we open.

The volunteer stats should be broken into adult and juvenile volunteers. There are columns on the stats spreadsheet now reflecting that.

The clear holdshelf numbers should be tracked everyday as well. Place this into the spreadsheet on the blog as well. This number should be found on the end of the printout whenever you do the clear holdshelf. The number will be next to the line that says "to be removed from holdshelf entirely."

The paging list books that we find that are checked in and fulfilled a hold for here also must now be counted. The ones on the paging list that are not found, no longer have a hold on them or are set in transit are not to be counted.

Thanks