Summer Schedule

Hello everyone,

I've spent the past day or so getting the schedule made for June and July.

At this point, it is as complete as Sara and I can make it.

Please take the time to look over what is on that schedule.

Make sure that any
a) programs
b) vacation
c) trainings

that you have scheduled are noted.

If you notice a discrepancy, please let Sara or me know about it *immediately*.

Also, if you need us to add/change things as time goes on, the sooner you can let the two of us know, the better.

Thanks!
Brandon

From the NL Leaders Blog

Revised Employee Guidebook

Hi – Every employee in Neighborhood Libraries is expected to provide exceptional customer service – the HPL way. Every one took the mandatory Customer Service training not too long ago. Do you have any staff members that need to take the Customer Service: HPL Way training?

There are some expectations from the City as well and I have taken an excerpt from page 6 of the Employee Guidebook to share with you. Please review the entire Guidebook for useful information.

Section III – Employee Relations: What’s Expected of You?

Employees truly communicate the spirit and pride of the City of Houston to its residents and the general public. Therefore, it is important as an employee of the city serving the public, that you always demonstrate patience, courtesy, respect, and understanding to all customers, both internal and external. We must treat everyone as a valued customer.

You can do this by delivering services quickly and by treating all people with courtesy and respect. Not only is it important that the public is treated this way, but it is also required that you treat all other employees with the same respect and courtesy.

The City of Houston Code of Ordinances, as well as the policies and procedures of the City and your department, contain many provisions regarding your employment, as well as various rules you are expected to follow. We expect you to be productive, to adhere to the rules and policies of each department and the city, and to demonstrate a considerate, cooperative, and constructive attitude to the public and your fellow employees. It is your duty to become familiar with these policies and procedures, and if you have any questions to ask your supervisor or manager.

Poor performance, inappropriate work behavior, and poor attendance are issues your supervisor could address with disciplinary action. We expect you to report when scheduled and be ready to work a full productive day. You are required to follow your management’s directions, be cooperative with them and your fellow employees, and work in a professional and polite manner. You are responsible for familiarizing yourself with the policies of the city and your department, as not everything is covered in this Manual and those policies are subject to change.

                 You can access the Guidebook any time fromwww.houstonhumanresources.org, or by clicking here.

Please share the information with all your staff in your next staff meeting and let your Team Leader know if you have any question.

Thank you,

Shammi

A note about roaming

When you are scheduled GR/R on the schedule, please make sure you are actually greeting and roaming, not just sitting behind the desk. If a line starts to form at the desk, you may assist there, but please don't be sitting behind the desk when it's not busy.

Roaming is especially important at Oak Forest during the after school hours. It helps deter bad behavior by the students not utilizing ASZ. Also, I found a lot of food wrappers in the soft seating areas in the children's area at Oak Forest this morning. When you roam, if you notice rule breaking, please gently enforce the rules. Let the customer know they can't eat in the library-suggest they go out to the deck to enjoy their snacks, or to ASZ if they are of the appropriate age. If you notice young children that are unattended, try to find their adult and let the adult know that they need to watch their children. You will also provide a lot of computer help when you're roaming, so please remember to mark down your questions!

Thanks for your help in providing extraordinary customer service!

Sara

SRP Read Down Your Fines Vouchers

First, please be certain you watch this 5 minute training video about how to use these vouchers.

https://sites.google.com/site/hplstafftraining/learningresources/libraryfunctions/read-down-your-fines

Second, we have now received the vouchers in Delivery.  Please be sure you know where they are being kept.  Treat these as though they were money.  Do not just leave them out on a desk or on top of a computer!!

Vouchers that are used by a customer need to be stamped with the appropriate branch stamp and placed in the cash register.  They are to be returned to Central with the deposit each day.

Please ask Sara or I if you have any questions.
Brandon

NO TAPE!!!!!

Hello everyone.

Mary and I were looking at some of the posters/decorations that were up at ACR today and we were distressed to discover that a lot of the material has been put up with tape.

Please stop using tape to post anything.  If you see *anything* that is already posted with tape, we need to remove it.

This includes things like "Out of Order" signs.  Everything should either use sticky putty, staples (if its a bulletin board), or a plastic stand.

Please help us keep the library from suffering from clutter!

Thanks,
Brandon

Read Down Your Fines!!!

Fred Shumacher and Thuy Vo have made a training video for the Read Down Your Fines program this summer. Please watch the video as it includes vital information on coupon handling. This will be necessary for a smooth summer. If you are a manager, please have your entire staff watch the video.

https://sites.google.com/site/hplstafftraining/learningresources/libraryfunctions/read-down-your-fines

I have also received word that coupons should begin to go out by the end of next week. Remember: the child qualifies for a coupon just by registering for SRP,  so please remember to add a note that the child did NOT receive the registration coupon in the notes field of the child’s Summer Reader record. Once coupons are available and they have been disbursed it is very important to go into the child’s record and DELETE this note.

This is a great opportunity for all the children of Houston to have the library freely available to them this summer. Every book read is an another opportunity for a child to succeed. Please encourage your customers to participate.  

Sandy Farmer

Awarding Registration Prize in Evanced

Good afternoon team!

Please make sure you and your staff are awarding the Registration Prize in Evanced! This is very important (as is awarding all prizes in Evanced) because it is how we keep track of the number of prizes awarded, which is important for our funding.

When a customer comes in to register for SRP, after you enter them into Evanced and click on Save, you need to go back and find them through a search, then click on the red gift icon.  The Registration Prize is the last lines on the screen, and you can either type a “1” into the Prize Eligibility box and click on the red gift with the green plus sign on it, or click on the Award All Prizes button at the bottom. Then let the customer select his/her Rosen book. If a customer has already signed up himself, you will simply search for them and award the prize in Evanced the same way.

Since we don’t yet have our $5 off fines coupon for Reading Down the Fines, please put a note in their account with the date that says something to the effect of “Has not received $5 coupon for registration” with your location and initials. You can save time on new registrations by entering this note upon customer sign up (the notes field is the last box) if you are awarding the Rosen book to them then. If you need to add the note on an already existing customer, or if you forget to enter it when you do the registration, edit the account by clicking on the little person icon, and add the note. After the note has been added, the person icon will now have a pencil on top of it, that means there’s a note there which should be looked at before you award them any more prizes! When the customer comes to collect their 5 book/hour prize, or if they come in for their coupon after we’ve received them, please give them the coupon and delete the note from their account.

If you have any questions about the process, feel free to give me a call, and I will be happy to walk you through it. Sandy Farmer is also a wealth of Evanced information, and remember, she will come to your location to train your staff in Evanced if you ask!

I’m very pleased to see that we already have a lot of kids signed up for SRP! Keep up the good work!

Sara

Good news about self-check machines!

Hello all.

SirsiDynix has updated our settings to allow self-check machines to automatically override blocks on items with “In Transit” for Current Location, blocks for items with holds that have not yet been trapped and  item messages on items with multiple parts/accompanying materials.  They will continue to block check out of items on the holds shelf to any card other than the one on which the item is held. 

We hope that these updated settings will result in improved service for your customers.  If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact the Circulation Administration Unit at 832-393-2222 (option 3).  We will be delighted to assist you however we are able.

Fred Schumacher

Circulation Administration Manager

Comics Plus Training

Hello,

Because our trainer is unable to enable more than eight logins, we are cancelling next Tuesday’s live webinars.

Instead, we are asking those who either missed the training last Thursday or planned to take it next Tuesday to please watch the archived webinar when we receive it from the trainer.  We will let you know as soon as it is posted on the training portal.    

You are welcome to explore Comics Plus at any time by creating an account at the URL highlighted below.

A few FAQs from Thursday’s training: 

1)       We will allow five checkouts at a time when the service goes live on Friday, May 23 (in time for Comicpalooza). 

2)       Items are checked out for seven days and cannot be returned early.

3)       This service works like hoopla, in that the library pays every time a customer downloads an item.  There is multiple access to any given title; that is, any number of users can read it at once. 

4)      This is a streaming service so you must be connected to the Internet to read your comics, manga and graphic novels.

5)      Iverse is adding additional publishers to the service.  Right now about 2/3 of the content is for children and young adults.

6)      There are materials in other languages that you can find by searching that language, including Mandarin and Spanish.

7)      Customers will need the latest version of most  common browsers to access the service.

Thanks for your patience.

--Sally

Sally Bates

Collection Development Department

SRP Registration

Hello team,

Very important message about awarding the SRP Registration Prize:

When someone signs up for SRP at your location (or signs themselves up online and comes in to collect their Registration Prize), go ahead and award the prize in Evanced, and give them their Rosen books. Since we don't have the $5 off fines coupon yet for reading down your fines, please make a note in the customer's account in Evanced that says "Has not received $5 coupon for registration" with your location and initials, so the note should look like: Has not received $5 coupon for registration OAK/SP

VERY IMPORTANT: After we receive the coupons, and the customer comes in to collect the coupon (perhaps when they come in to collect their reading prizes), give them the coupon and DELETE THE NOTE by editing their account. This is standard procedure for when we don't one element of a prize level, since you will already have awarded the other item in the registration prize (the Rosen book).

If you need instructions on how to add and delete notes, remember that Sandy Farmer has offered to come to your locations to do Evanced for SRP training, and she can show you how. Youth staff that attended the April youth meeting/training should be able to do this as well.

We are hoping to have the coupons ready to go for June, and we don't usually have too many people signing up in May.

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask either myself or Sandy Farmer.

Thanks!

Sara 

Statistics are important!

Statistics are important! They are a way of tracking and showing how busy we are, and they justify our staffing levels. Keeping accurate statistics is everyone's job. On this note, I want to remind everyone to PLEASE mark down your questions on the statistics sheets! I just entered some statistics for ACR, and there were some days that there were no questions marked at all. I find it hard to believe that nobody asked how to sign on to the computer, how to use the printer etc. Remember to mark down your questions!

Also, remember to write down the gate count! On the schedule, when we put you down for DP (deposit), you are also going to see GC (for Gate Count). So, when you are scheduled to get the deposit ready in the morning, you are also responsible for making sure the gate count gets written on the statistics sheet.

On the stats sheet for holds, I want to remind you about the distinction between the 2 columns. In the "Pulled" column, that is how many items were on the paging list, whether you were able to find them or not. There only needs to be one number in this column-sometimes people write the number paged and the number pulled-we only need the number paged. The "Processed" column is how many holds/items are staying at your location. So, it's the number of items checked in from delivery, plus if any items that a customer returns activates a hold at your location, you can put +1, or +2 etc.

Lastly, if you conduct a computer class or open job lab, please remember to enter those statistics on the appropriate online forms, as soon as your class is over! Don't wait until the day they are due, because you might be out sick, and then we have to scramble to figure out what the statistics were (or weren't) for the month.

Thanks!

-Sara