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what do the evening staff do??
December 20, 2006 - 15:43 — Keith Walker
Now that I have this blogging down pat (after I found my password again!) I have another query for you: what jobs do you have your evening and weekend staff do at the Circulation Desk? As we pass off some of the traditional work that the Circ staff do, such as having e-reserves, self-check circulation, and so on, what jobs are left for those who work the less busy shifts? We are really stuggling to find jobs that will keep them occupied - they are asking for more to do but since they have to stay at the Desk it is difficult to give them projects. We are interested in learning what the evening and weekend clerks do at your libraries. We need them - they are important front lines people - but we want them to stay interested and productive.
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What do evening staff do?
Hello, Keith. While my one evening staff member is generally fully engaged with Circ, Ref + Closed Reserve, I have given him the added task, of staying on top of our hardware. I had him design a map of our Learning Commons which is housed on our network drive. His job is to sit down at each one of our machines and test them to make sure that they are fully operational. Every evening, therefore he sends me a report on which machines need attention. He documents this in an email to me and attaches our network housed map which highlights the machine he is speaking off. I have this verified and then if it is indeed a problem, pass it on to our tech staff. This way, we do not have to wait for frustrated patrons to inform us of problems, we stay on top of it. I plan to expand this to testing to include our databases this semester. Something you might want to add is having them 'play' with one of the new Lois Hole database a week, to get them comfortable with what there is and then have them plan a short training session every week for the rest of the library staff…. Cheers, Christine Christine.sammon@acad.ca
Evening Staff
Hello Keith,
Because our Library is so small, the evening person is able to be away from the desk yet still watch it. When not helping patrons, he shelf-reads, cleans the flat monitors and keyboards in the Information Commons, fills all the paper trays in the printers and the photocopier and, of late, processes weeded items--a time-consuming and thankless task. Occasionally I will have him do an author search and compile a bibliography. However, in reading Christine's comment, I think I might incorporate that into his duties as well!
Hope this helps ~ Barbara
What Do Evening Staff Do?
I agree with Keith that it is a challenge when giving project work to evening staff when these staff cannot leave the desk but will have less busy times during the evening and want rewarding work to do.
One of the things we are doing here at SAIT is having our evening staff assist with collection development. These staff will search places like Amazon for books and DVD's in assigned subject areas and also find acceptible reviews.
These staff will provide list of suggestions and recommendations. Once the liaison staff who actually decide if the book should be purchased give the go ahead, the evening staff post the book request into our SIRSI system so our cataloguer knows that the item has been approved, what budget code it is coming out of and then can provide details if it is unavailable, out-of-print so we may have to go "back to the drawing board" and select a new title recommendation.
These assignments work well under tight deadlines, when you want more staff input on popular title buying or wish to provide avenues for more library staff to make title/subject recommendations.
Susan Brayford Library Manager SAIT Polytechnic susan.brayford@sait.ca (403) 210-4477