Bookdrop

Good afternoon,

We have a receipt printer on the thumper machine now in the back.

Please scan all bookdrop through that machine from this point forward.

Thanks,

Patrick

Couple of Notes

Good Morning,

We need to make sure to keep at least two self-check machines on until the last person is out the door and the door has been locked at the end of the day.

I've seen it three or four times now where we shut them down except for the newer model, and then the last three people in the building all come up at once to checkout, and we end up having to check them out at the desk.

Also, do not put any more of the change into the deposit than you have to. In other words do not substitute coins for dollars.

We are constantly running out of coins for the register and having to scramble to replenish.

It may seem like we have too many quarters, but we can just keep them all and send dollar bills instead in the deposit.

Thanks,

Patrick

Manager's Meeting 3/22/2012

There was a manager's meeting this morning.

We covered the following:

Administration Meetings

The meetings with Mike and other administration will be moved to Fridays now. Let me know if you are interested in attending any of these. They will be from 9am to 11am at various locations throughout the system.

Project Funds

City Council embers gave us some money. There will be a program involving workforce development at Vinson and Hillendahl. They will have iPads loaded with workforce type apps. There will be 5 iPads per location.

Ring and Hillendahl will be getting new furniture.

We are also buying two large screen laptops and two large screen monitors for use for the vision impaired. These will be floating. We can request them once they become available if we have a need. They will also be loaded with voice software and zoom text to help as well.

Friends booksale money will be used to help fund trips to ALA and TLA for staff.

There will also be some self-check machines replaced at various locations. Stella is one of the places that will get the new machines.

Substitutes

We have 13 additional substitutes that have been trained. That brings us to 45 total. We are right on pace with the funds for this program. Please keep requesting substitutes whenever you need them.

New Positions

There are positions being opened up as we speak. Some have just closed There will be new ones opening in the near future. Keep your eye on that if you are wanting to move up.

On-Call Weekend

Someone from administration is on call each weekend. They rotate from week to week. Just cal the 32707 number on Saturdays and someone will be on call.

Passports

We are tentatively scheduled to start doing passports here at Stella in August. This has been a very successful program at Alief and Central. Alief has done a total of 454 passports in the approximately six months of the passport program thus far. They are making $25 per application, so you can do the math on the revenue being generated. We are still working on what our schedule will be. We will not be accepting applications every hour that we are open. We will only accept them for certain hours throughout the week.

Comment Forms

We should fill out a comment form for a complaint or compliment if the customer verbally gives us one but does not want to fill out the form. These should be sent to Yolanda in Neighborhood Libraries. We can also do it online. Just make sure it is stated that you are filling this out for a customer and mention the location.

Literacy

Carnegie has been designated a literacy hub. As such, they may soon have a completely different schedule from the other libraries. A lot will depend on their needs in order to fill the literacy void in that neighborhood. If anyone has a passion for literacy, please let me or someone in administration know.

Security

We are working on a city-wide suspension policy. Frederic will be asked about whether our security cameras are functioning properly. GSD makes decisions on security guards largely based on incident reports.

Thanks and keep up the hard work.

Patrick

Saturdays

Starting from this point forward, if you miss a Saturday for any reason without having first worked this out well in advance, you will be required to work the following Saturday.


This only starts for Saturdays missed fronm this day forward.

Thanks,
Patrick

Staff Meeting Notes 03/14/2012

Good Afteroon,

Here is a summary of what we covered this morning at the meeting.

1. Tardies - Any time you show up as tardy in Kronos, we will have a discussion. The first time you get a warning, second time performance improvement discussion and then we follow the HPL procedure from there. This starts over each month. So, if you only have one tardy per month, then you will only ever get warnings.
2. AWOL - We should not be getting to the point where an AWOL shows up on our timesheet. This will affect our EPE's in many ways.
3. Bookdrop - Pay attention to each and every book that you scan. We will put all bookdrop through the thumper machine once we get a receipt printer installed on that side.
4. Parking - We are communicating with Sheltering Arms to get them to not have their employees park in our spots.
5. Passports - We will be a facility to do passports starting in August. Jesse, Tim, Nhu, Renee and I will all be trained on how to do the passports. We are not sure on a schedule yet.
6. FAFSA - We are doing FAFSA training on Wednesdays at 5pm for the month of March and maybe beyond. This is where we open the lab up for students to apply for federal student aid.
7. Bertha - They replaced one part, but that did not cure the problem. They are ordering a few more parts to try and get it worked out. We do not have a timetable for this
8. Fire - We did an excellent job with the evacuation procedure when the light fixture was smoking. We got everyone out in a timely manner. Excellent job under stress

Keep up the good work.

Patrick

Bookdrop

When checking in bookdrop, please do not put any items on the desk next to the computer. If the item does not check in properly, put it back in the bookdrop. If you do not want to get i mixed up with the rest of bookdrop, stand up and walk the items into the bookdrop room and place it in the other bookdrop bin. If the item has no record found, stand up and walk it over to Tim's bin.

Do not under any circumstances place any items anywhere else.

These items get placed next to the printer or the receipt printer to get back to later and then later never comes.

Just do something with the item then and there and we won't have to worry about it.

Thanks,

Patrick

Bookdrop

We are going to have a new system with bookdrop.

I encountered probably no less than ten items on Saturday that were either still checked out to someone, in transit or should have been on our holdshelf that customers brought up to checkout. If I found that many in just the three or four hours I was on the desk, I can only imagine how many are out there in total.

We are going to have two people designated to do bookdrop each hour for the next week. One person will do the bookdrop, the other person will be quality control. I see no other option. It is unacceptable to continue with the same rate of incorrect check-ins that we have at the moment. We will revisit this at the end of the week.

On Saturday this will not be possible, so that is the lone exception. During the week, two people on the bookdrop at all times. The second person should be doing no other duties but focusing completely on providing quality control for the main worker on the bookdrop.

Also, every single item that is going somewhere else should be wrapped and labeled now. Even the ones that belong to Central. Print out the transit slip for those and label them as such.

Thank you.

Patrick

March 7 Staff Meeting Notes

• Roaming - We will go back to roaming in the 4 o'clock hour. The Pershing kids have gotten a little out of hand lately. We will keep them quiet in the adult area. They can talk at a low level in the teen area. If they want to be loud at all, suggest the ASZ to them. We will keep them from loitering in front of the library.
• Pickup - Always go up and down each row when doing pick up. In the afternoon pickup, time permitting, we should take the books and put them back in their proper place. If time is short, you can take a cart and dump the books in the cart and bring to the back and sort out into Bertha. Use your best judgment.
• Central Books - Central books a lot of times have the small dots or the big S on the spine. If you notice a book like that, please try to check it in again to make sure that it really should be on our shelf. The only ones that we have that are like that are the large print books and a lot of the art books have dots. These are not the big black dots for the African-American interest books, but the small colorful dots that we should be aware of.
• Saturdays - Saturdays should consist of shelving, bookdrop/others and desk, shelving bookdrop/others and desk, nothing else. Get your breaks and lunch in there when you can, but save the pet projects for during the week. All hands should be on desk on Saturdays.
• Kronos - Please do not use the quick punch in the morning. Sign-in through the regular Kronos and take a minute to look at your timecard to see how it looks for the week. Then you can use the timestamp from within your Kronos portal. For lunches and going home, you can use the quick punch, but not in the morning please.
• Calling in - Please try to call in as soon as you know you are going to be late or be out for the day. If you are 6 minutes late, Kronos will count you as on time, but that does not mean that the library sees it that way. It helps to offset the fact that you are late by showing the initiative to call in beforehand and let us know.
• Bricks - We have the bricks out front that people can purchase again. It is $100 for a single brick. We have pamphlets all over the place that they can pick up and fill out. The directions should be on the pamphlet.
• Applications - Watch the card apps. We have had a few duplicate accounts lately. Always, always, always check the alternate ID ("u") field for TDL or TID and also check for the name. Try to be as thorough as possible with this.
• RFID/Barcode issues - We are finding some items where the RFID and barcode do not match. Particularly when checking in bookdrop, we need to double check if an items claims to not be checked out. If we scan the barcode and it says not checked out, then try to scan the RFID tag on the thumper machine to make sure it really is not checked out.
• Laptops - Juveniles must have parent permission to checkout a laptop. Always check the account to make sure that it says yes for laptop permission.

I'll leave you with the words of Plutarch, "To make no mistakes is not in the power of man; but from their errors and mistakes the wise and good learn wisdom for the future."

Stay alert and stay professional.

Thanks for working so hard.

Patrick

Checking In Items

I have noticed several items that say they are not checked out after scanning them with the bar code. However, they are checked out because the tag reads different than the bar code. So, from now on, when an item says not checked out, put it aside and use the tag reader to check it in. If it does check in that way, give it to Tim or Patrick and have them correct it.

Thanks

Renee

Laptop checkout for juveniles

Please make sure to check for laptop permission before you ok a checkout to juveniles. I had to explain this to a student recently. He didn't have permission but said he had been getting one.

Thanks

Renee

Money Orders for Fines

Good Afternoon,

I talked to Isis today about accepting money orders for fines.
She said that we could do that. Just use the cash option on Smart Money.
We are not allowed to give them any change, so if the money order is made out for more than the fine itself the patron has to be willing to forfeit their change.

Patrick

Brick Pamphlets

We now have some pamphlets at the front desk for people that would like to purchase a brick on the front sidewalk.

The information on where they should send the form and money is on the pamphlet.

Patrick