Good Afternoon,
I had a few reminders and a few new concepts to throw out there.
First, we need to make sure our ringers on our phones are always set to vibrate or off whenever we are on the floor, around the public in any capacity. This includes desk time, shelving, putting up holds, etc. We do not want our cell phones going off within hearing range of customers. That makes us look unprofessional.
Badges should be worn at all times from the time you clock in until you clock out and go home. In the back, on the floor, they should be worn at all times.
Sandy Farmer is going to contact us about our gaming equipment. This will be for inventory purposes I believe. Jesse is our main contact person for the gaming equipment. Jarele is going to be our backup and then Tim will be the emergency backup just in case since he is familiar with the equipment. I will forward the e-mail along to Jesse when I get it, but I would like for Jesse and Jarele to go over the inventory together at that time to familiarize yourselves with the extent of our collection.
We have been instructed to include "Houston Public Library" in our e-mail signatures. If you are not sure how to create a signature, then ask me or Renee. Also, logos of any kind, other than HPL logos, will not be allowed in signatures.
We need to start reining in the behavior in the teen area after school. It is painfully obvious now that the glass wall is not holding the noise level down, so we are just going to have to have the teens bring the volume level down a notch or two more. To this end, I have started to putting roaming duties on the schedule from 4-5 on some or most days. This basically consists of walking around mainly in the teen area and trying to keep the horseplay and excess noise to a minimum. The security guard (or one of us) can write the kids up if we find any that need to be written up.
Offer them the option of going into the game room if they want to talk too loudly. They do have some wiggle room on standing around in the teen area. They do not have to be seated necessarily. They do have to keep the noise down though. We have to expect noise in the game room though Just shut the door and try to keep the noise inside. If they are horse playing entirely too much, then we can write them up and suspend them. We do not want to put them back into the library from the game room for being too loud.
Report any suspicious behavior to me or Renee. We had someone claiming to be a reporter, asking middle school students questions. This person may or may not have been a reporter, but they cannot interview kids or take any pictures inside the library without our consent and the parent's consent.
We are responsible for the well being of all of our customers, so just remember that if you see something that seems unsafe please report that behavior to me or Renee or to whomever is in charge.
The bins in the back by the back door are to be separated. Some of the bins are for items going to Central and some are for every other location. Try to keep them separated out.
Lastly, I want to acknowledge the superb job we are doing as a team. Our self-check stats went way up this month. The final figures will not be in for a few weeks, but it looks like we have gone from around 50% self-check usage before we closed, to 70% in September and probably over 80% for October. Our circulation was 30,000 in September and 43,000 in October. Expect this number to keep rising as we pick up steam again post-renovation. I think I have noticed, and I hope everyone else has as well, how much of a burden is lifted from us whenever customers use the self-checks primarily. We used to staff the desk with at lest 3 people at all times. We now only use 3 people once a day in the 4 o'clock hour. Even 2 people on the desk seems flexible at times now, as we seldom have the need to check out or check in patrons at the desk. This frees up staff to shelve and do delivery, etc.
Just continue doing what we can to make sure that the customers understand that we are willing to help them in every way possible. We will gladly help them learn to use the machines over and over if we have to. We do not want to give them any reason to believe that we are too lazy to check out the books for them. I think we are doing an excellent job with this already. Always make the effort to walk them through it. Do not sit and point.
Our Stella Link team is really coming together nicely and firing on all cylinders now. Keep up the solid work.
Patrick
