June Calendar of Events

The June calendar of Events has been added to the Google Drive for easy access.

Brain Chase

The Houston Public Library is excited to announce that we are participating in the Brain Chase Library Challenge! Brain Chase invites several library systems each summer to participate in a fun library treasure hunt challenge for kids between the ages 6 to 16. We are participating along with Dallas Public Library and Lubbock Public Library in a mini-treasure hunt.  The Dallas Public Library challenge kicked off on 5/9/17 and is already solved. The Lubbock Public Library challenge kicked off on 5/16/17 and is also already solved.

Our challenge kicks off today at 3:00 pm and ends on June 30, 2017 or once someone solves the riddle and finds the key.

Kids are provided with a riddle to find a key in a book at one of our library locations. The key opens a treasure chest worth $1,000. The key was hidden this morning. No one is aware of the location. Again no one at HPL knows which HPL location or which book the key was hidden in. The key is attached to instructions on how to redeem it. Brain Chase takes care of redemption with the kid who finds the key and their parents/guardians. Children of HPL staff are unable to receive the prize.

Learning Link

FYI: The user privilege expiration dates for the Learning Link cards in the system have been extended to 08/31/17.  Every student with a Learning Link card now has access to our materials through the coming summer.

Passport Photos on a Flash Drive

Every now and then we will have a passport customer asking if they can have a digital copy of their passport photo. Customers who want a digital copy of their passport photo can now do so if they purchase a flash drive from us. We can then save the photo onto the flash drive to give to the customer.

Let me know if you have any questions. Thanks!

Windows Message on Public Computers

Some of the public computers display a message saying "Windows Embedded. Build 7601. This Copy of Windows is not genuine" in the lower right corner of the screen. IT was contacted about this message. The meaning of the message is that the copy/version of Windows will expire soon. Techs from IT will begin coming out to the branches to upgrade our version.

Stella Link Team Meeting May 17, 2017

Present: Linda Shen, Jacob Hornbeak, Erica Huff, Jesse Farias, Nhu Le, Amethyst Taylor, Ade Odusanwo, Ray Williams, Carol Wu, and Jose Zamora

Leading: Edgar Fuentes

Not Present: Frances Saldana, Alex Gabitto, Lexi Fruge, and Patricia Tucker

Thank you: Good work on passports this weekend. We processed 97 applications, which means we are getting a better handle on Qless. Keep up the good work. Thanks to everyone for your hard work.

Thanks to Amethyst for helping out at the Blue Ridge grand opening this past Saturday, which was her day off.

Passport Office: Work is being conducted in the meeting rooms. Work will also be conducted in the small meeting room this Friday, which will have out passport office relocated into the small meeting room. Until the passport office is completed, any After School Zone program scheduled in the small meeting room will be canceled until the end of this semester. Thanks for your cooperation. Remember to direct customers to the correct place for oath and payment when the office is relocated.

I have called all groups originally scheduled in the small meeting room through the beginning of June explaining that the room will be unavailable. One group this Saturday afternoon will be using the computer lab to study for the State Bar exam.

Be The Peace: Friday May 19^th at 4pm we will have the Be The Peace program in the computer lab while the passport office is relocated.

Receive Transit: Please continue to use “Receive Transit” when checking in delivery items in the morning.

Library Items at Desk: If you have library items at your desk, please make sure that they are checked out to you. If they are not, customers will see that they are available on the shelf, when really they are not. Please remember to not abuse your staff borrower privileges. The one privilege staff have is not accruing fines, but you should still follow the same renewal practice as customers and not put yourself at the top of any hold list for popular titles.

Weeding: As you shelve items, particularly in the nonfiction section, please remember to pull any superseded titles. For example if you see FODOR’S HAWAII 2017, you can pull FODOR’S HAWAII 2016 or anything before that. You can also pull older editions of things like NOLO Guides if a newer one exists in the system.

Meeting Rooms : Laurie is currently working on updating meeting room policies.
Some reminders about the current policy: if customers are bringing single serving prepackaged snacks (such as chips and cookies), there is no fee. If the customer is bringing in sandwiches, cheese trays, fruit trays, pizza, or anything else that requires preparation, there is a $25 fee paid the day of the meeting.

Meetings should be nonprofit only. If the people holding the meeting stands to make money from the meeting, then they cannot use the space. Home Owner Associations are allowed. Political Groups or Political campaigning is not allowed.

Staff reserves the right to go into the room for any purpose. We cannot set up the room for the group. They must account for setup time when they make the reservation.

Team Discussion:

Amethyst is hosting Community Engagement on an activity this afternoon from 4-6PM on the Aberdeen side of the building. She is also leading a field trip to the zoo on Monday from 4-6PM. Please ask the children to meet in the children’s area if they arrive early.

Ray wants to thank everyone who helped out with the Comic Palooza last Friday. It was a success and the attendees gave positive feedback. 

Update: Public Printer Problem

The issue with the printer has been resolved. A test print was successful.

Public Printer Out of Order

The printing computer is sending jobs to the printer, but does not print. The green communication light continues to flash. The situation was reported.

Workroom Computer with flickering screen

The computer in the workroom closest to Jesse's desk has a flickering screen when first unlocked or started. Restart and reset of connections failed to improve the condition. Reported to IT on 5/11/17.

Stella Link Team Meeting May 10, 2017

Present: Jesse Farias, Linda Shen, Jacob Hornbeak, Alex Gabitto, Amethyst Taylor, Patricia Tucker, Jose Zamora, Frances Saldana, Erica Huff, Nhu Le, Ray Williams, Lexi Fruge, Carol Wu, and Tim Siegel

Leading: Edgar Fuentes

Not Present: Ade Odusanwo

Thank you: Thank you all for your continued patience as the meeting rooms, hallway, and computer lab get patched and painted. Pretty soon we will have to be flexible when the conference room serves as our temporary passport office. Some programs will be affected.

Thank you to Ray for going out to find the vinyl backdrop for us to use for taking passport photos. The vinyl should be wiped with Clorox wipes between uses.

Congratulations to Amethyst for winning Innovative Practices Champion award at the 2017 Community Spirit of Excellence Afterschool Awards given for the Center for Afterschool, Summer and Enrichment for Kids. Her work with the Museum Field Trips really is impressive, and we are happy she was recognized for her hard work.

QLess: During the last Qless discussion with Patrick and other passport managers, we decided that ANY customers who are returning the same day be put in the Expired list, even if they have several missing components.

This is to help with consistency across the system and best customer service practice. Customers will have already put in “time equity” into waiting for their turn, so it would only be fair to allow them to return with the documentation they did not have initially. Making the customer wait in line a second time would not be exceptional customer service.

Passports: Edgar sent all passport agents an email regarding 16/17 year olds. To make sure everyone was clear on the information: 16/17 year olds are not required to have their own ID if they have a parent with them. If the 16/17 year old has their ID with them, we can include it in the application. Otherwise, use the parent ID only.

Drinks: If you have a can soda or any drink in a cup with you, please refrain from taking it to the desk with you. If a customer sees that you have one, they may question why staff are allowed to but customers cannot.

Be The Peace: Friday May 19^th at 4pm we will have a Be the Peace a program focusing on children in refugee camps outside the U.S. Children will create standard-size art pieces with messages of Hope and encouragement to deliver to children in the refugee camps.

Carnegie Tagging: Carnegie needs volunteers to help with their tagging project the weeks of May 14, 2017 – May 23, 2017. The commitment is at least 3 consecutive days. Meeting Length: Mon- Fri, 7:00 am – 3:30 pm; Sun 9:00am- 5:30pm (4hr shift is available)

Email Reply All: When sending emails, please be careful in hitting “reply all” when it’s a systemwide email. Also, never send an email to “HPL-ALL EMPLOYEES.” Those emails must have prior approval from the Executive Leadership Team (ELT), generally Liz Sargent or Roosevelt Weeks.

Holds: When we shelve holds, we need to make sure that we group the same person’s holds together. There is a customer with the last name “CHAN, N” that gets her holds but there are several other customers that are also CHAN, N. We need to then look at the last 4 of the card number to separate the holds accordingly. Otherwise, the customer will have to look through all the holds to find hers, which is not good customer service.

Team Discussion:

Tim noted that the meeting room schedule has been created for August 2017.  Recurring programs should appear. If you lead any programs, please check the calendar to verify your times and spaces are available. It will open up for the public tomorrow.
Alex would like to thank everyone who helped with her display.

Jacob informed everyone to put new magazines received in the mail on his desk. Any magazines that are checked in through the express check-in machine should be placed in the blue holders outside Edgar’s office. Please do not put any magazines on his two shelves beneath the discard shelf.

Jose is asking for dictionaries and National Geographic magazines for the students in his ESL class.

Frances said the dishwasher is not working and to help keep the break area clean.

Jesse said there would be no Arabic class today.

Patricia asked about SRP calendars. STE calendars for the SRP are available, but we do not have anything for system-wide programs.

Ray will be hosting a Comic-Palooza here at STE on Friday May 12^th from 3-5PM in the Computer Lab. Lexi and Alex will be assisting. 

Niche Academy

HPL recently purchased a subscription to a new training tutorial center through The Niche Academy. This service provides short videos to help you become more familiar with all of our electronic resources. All tutorials are easy to use and available on demand as needed.  As an added bonus, Niche Academy tutorials are always up-to-date and include video instruction, printable text with images and a mobile responsive user interface.

To access the tutorials, please follow the steps below:

• Click on link to go to The Niche Academy page on the HPL Training Portal:  http://training.houstonlibrary.org/niche-academy
• Click on the "View Tutorial" button below the slideshow or click on the titles below to view the courses.
• Sign up for an account using your City email address.

Stella Link Team Meeting May 3, 2017

Present: Patricia Tucker, Carol Wu, Jesse Farias, Jacob Hornbeak, Erica Huff, Lexi Fruge, Alex Gabitto, Jose Zamora, Ray Williams, Ade Odusanwo, Nhu Le, Frances Saldana, Linda Shen, and Tim Siegel

Leading: Edgar Fuentes

Not Present: Amethyst Taylor (After School Meeting)

Thank you
- Good work, Alex, on the Wonder Woman display.
- Nhu received Positive Pops from Youth Services on her work with creating SRP calendars and scheduling performers for a large number of libraries.

QLess: Great work on week 1 of QLess. As we get closer to launch time, we want to make sure the conditions are set for what it will be like when we do go live in a few weeks.
- Help customers sign up on the iPad, and please be sure to hand them one of the sheets of paper with the information as to what they will need to bring. No need to go into detail about documents – unless they ask.
- Those of us who use QLess: we can summon several customers at a time to avoid having quiet lulls during the day where we are waiting for the customer to arrive.
- If a customer has everything compiled and ready but only needs to get a money order or they just need to bring the child (which would not require any additional work on the application), we can mark them as complete in QLess and then have them come right back with either the payment or the family member. All they need to do is check in at the front desk and we immediately send them to the back office.
- If a customer is missing one or several components on the application, including having one parent (which would require photocopying the ID and writing the ID information on the application), they would need to be put right back at the end of the line before they leave. It would only be fair since the other customers are getting time alerts and if we add the customer to the front of the line, it would bump everyone else back.

Book Drop: Waive any fines associated with items that customers stated they were unable to return due to jammed book drop.

FLIP Kits: Frances has helped organize the FLIP Kits by age range (tag color) on the FLIP dog house. Please try to keep all the Orange FLIP Kits on the back side of the doghouse, the blue FLIP Kits along the side of the house facing the cabinets, and all others (pink, green, and yellow) on the side facing the library's children's area windows. This helps customers better browse the FLIP Kits for age appropriate titles.

Sick Use: Memo from Dr. Lawson. The memo asks managers to work with employees to better document sick leave usage. It would be good practice to start bringing in doctor’s notes when you are out so that there is no question as to the legitimacy of your absence if you have been out for several times already. If you need to see how many hours of sick you have used up this benefits calendar year, please let me know (Sept 1, 2016 – Aug 31).

Deposit: Make sure two people are independently counting the money when doing daily deposit.

Headphones: Make sure you use only 1 headphone prior to opening time, and that headphones are put away entirely once the building is open.

Labels: If you come across items that have faded call numbers (and if the item is in good condition), you can put it in the labeling shelf in the workroom. Same for any missing labels (large print stickers, bluebonnet, etc).

Desk: When staff are assigned to Desk or Rove, I just want to remind everyone that the two staff members work in tandem as a team. This means that the Rover can walk over to answer phones when the phone is ringing if the Desk person is assisting other customers. Likewise, Desk person may also assist customers with checking out items if the Rover is helping other customers. No one should feel like they are tied to one particular station.

Phone Use: Remember that if you need to use your phone for any emergency , please step to the workroom. Please do not use your phone at the desk. Personal browsing of websites should be only during lunch or breaks.

Team Discussion:

Nhu described the College Prep display in the Teen Area created by Amethyst. Some SAT and other test prep guides are on display in this area that would normally be in adult nonfiction in case another customer is looking for them

Ray asked about scenarios being encountered with QLess. Edgar addressed these scenarios with solutions.

Frances asked everyone to please clean up the break room area, specifically the fridge and table, if a mess is made. 

May Calendar of Events

The May Calendar of Events has been uploaded to the google drive for your convenience in case you need to print out more.

-Edgar

Weekend Bookdrop

Team,

Please remember to roll out the large orange book on Saturdays after closing to ensure we are able to catch all the items in the outside book return. Please note, however, that there will be days when the book drop will clog up over the weekend, making it impossible for some customers to return their items.

Anytime a customer tells you that the book drop was jammed and that they were unable to return their items, please apologize to the customer, waive their fines, and be sure to place a note on their record explaining the situation, along with the date and your initials.

-Edgar