Author: Eric Melton

The cash register will be unavailable briefly Wednesday morning as it gets serviced to accept credit card payments.

Eric

Peter Tornabane, one of our regular patrons has been banned from the library for one year for theft of booksale items and dvds. Please contact me if you see him in the library.

Eric

Remember all those registrations and library cards we created during the time period we were offline (11/14/13-11/18/13) between SIRSI and Polaris?  They had been sitting in the basket on my desk awaiting the arrival of their owner to pick them up…well, four months later and still no one has picked up a few of the cards.  So, I have placed a blocking note on each account and filed the library cards in the black box in the workroom.  If someone comes in to the library to claim their card, please retrieve it from there and remove the blocking note on the account.

Thank you!

Missy

I had occasion to spend quite a bit of time at this year’s Lions Club book sale and I heard of number of positive, complimentary comments about the Johnston library staff.  You are seen as welcoming, friendly, cheerful and helpful to our users.  I know it has been a long stressful winter and some of the customers you’ve dealt with have been less than congenial;  it speaks well for you all that you’ve maintained your composure and pleasant dispositions. Congratulations and keep up the good work! 

Maurine

Effective immediately we will be resuming a batch calling process for those holds generated at check in.   This is in response to customer request as  a number of customers have expressed their dissatisfaction with the current process and receiving multiple calls throughout the day.  Following is the revised procedure for holds notification:

As items are checked in and the system prompts that that an item is on hold for a customer, press the enter key to generate a hold slip.   Check the hold slip for notification type and proceed as follows:

Email or TXT notification — place these directly on the holds shelf, alphabetized by customer’s last name.

Phone or Mailing notification — place these on the bottom shelf of the black holds truck behind the front desk.  Phone calls notifying customers about these holds will be made twice per day: 1) in the morning as part of the opening process  or 2) at 4:00 pm by the staff member assigned to the Circulation desk.

     If you are the staff person responsible for phoning a customer about available holds, please use the following script:

   “This is (your name) with the Johnston Public Library and I am calling for (customer’s name).  Item(s) placed on hold are now available at the  Johnston Library.  We will hold your item(s) through (date printed on slip), you will need your library card to check out these hold items.  If you have questions, please call the library at 515-278-5233.  Thank you.”

     Make a note on the printed hold slip above the customer’s name.  Include date of call, your initials and whether you left a message or spoke with the customer.

     Place the item(s) on hold shelf, alphabetized by customer’s last name.

Items on hold for library staff — please follow the same process for items that are personal holds for library staff.  Library use holds (Mending, Storytime, Technical Services, etc.) should be checked out to the appropriate account and placed on the designated shelf in the Workroom.   PLEASE do NOT place any hold on a staff member’s desk that is not correctly checked out — we are spending an increasing amount of staff time tracking down items missing from the holds shelf that have just been handed to a staff member or placed on a desk.

Please see Maurine if you have questions.

I’ve been working on incorporating the library’s new logo into the online catalog and updating the look of it slightly. The homepage in particular still needs some work. It will be a few more weeks before it’s ready to go live. Staff can preview it via the link below. Feedback is welcome.

http://catalog.johnstonlibrary.com/pac/index.php?site_switch=full_dev

Eric

I turned off the Welcome Screen on the wireless access points.  The Welcome Screen displays the Internet Use agreement that patrons have to accept before being able to access the Internet.  Several patrons are having problems getting the Welcome Screen to display on their devices, so we’re experimenting with discontinuing it.

Until further notice, patrons will be able to connect to Wi-Fi (SSID: JOHNSTONLIBRARY) and immediately access the Internet without taking any intermediate steps.

If you have any questions or concerns, please let me know.

Dreama

A credit card machine will be installed sometime in the next couple of weeks. We will begin accepting credit card payments for library (not foundation) transactions sometime in April following staff training. 

Several new books are ending up in not-new locations. Please keep an eye on the shelf location column when checking in and place all books designated as new in the crate marked “New”.

February’s staff meeting minutes are now available via the first link included below (only accessible within the library). Follow the you tube link below to view the presentation shown at the meeting.

http://catalog.johnstonlibrary.com/staff/docs/staff-meeting-minutes/

www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZWZ8vCADSg

It’s time again!  Timesheets are due today, Wednesday, March 5th. 

Thank you!

Missy

The spine labels have been changed on all the XBOX 360 game cases and display cases, except for a few games that are currently checked out.  Those few are on hold for Tech Services to relabel.

So the game display cases are back on the shelves.

Shelving at circ for all the games have been relabeled in preparation for addition of the new games; Wii U, XBOX 1 and PS4.

The XBox video games have temporarily been removed from the shelves as they are being relabeled.  Our current XBox games are for the 360 console unit.  Soon there will be games available for checkout that are XBox 1 games for the newer console.

So to help show the difference, the 360 games will have call #’s of (on the spine and in the catalog) —

     VG

      XBOX

      360

      XXX(1st 3 letter of the name of the game)

The newer games will be VG XBOX 1 XXX in the catalog and the spine labels will be —

     VG

      XBOX

      1

      XXX

Be aware, we will soon start to add Wii U video games and PS4 games.  So please pay attention to the call #’s and spine labels.

And excuse my tardiness in getting this out, I am a day late.

Jo

The city is holding two sessions on workplace harassment (listed below). This is not required but is encouraged. The sessions will be held at city hall.

Wednesday, April 2nd

9:00 – 11:00 AM               

1:00 – 3:00 PM                   

It’s not to soon to begin mentioning to patrons our upcoming food-for-fines food drive. During National Library Week, April 13-19, patrons can pay their fines with non-perishable food items. One food item pays $1 in fines. Fees for damaged or lost items cannot be paid with food. We will discuss issues of procedure at March’s staff meeting.

The new JPL letterhead can be found under “printables” on the intranet and via the link below (accesible inside the library only). Please use it in lieu of the old template for all outside correspondence.

http://catalog.johnstonlibrary.com/staff/docs/letterhead.docx

Eric

The State Library is putting on a webinar on dealing with difficult patrons Wednesday, April 30th at 9:30am. I’d like to invite all staff to attend (on the clock of course). If you can’t make it, an archive of the session should be available for viewing soon after. Please let me know if you’ll be attending.

Eric

Jessica was interviewed for an article on Teen-Tech-Week by School Library Journal! Read it below.

http://www.thedigitalshift.com/2014/02/k-12/teen-tech-week-2014-computer-tear-downs-skyping-raspberry-pis/

Staff members have been reporting that the public Print Station has been freezing up.  The PC has to be rebooted before the public can print their documents.

When I looked at the Print Station, I found the Scroll Lock light lit on the keyboard.  This may or may not be a factor.  Cheryl will store the keyboard and mouse behind the Reference Desk to elminate this factor.

I installed updates today to both the Management Console and the Print Station.

Please let me know if the Print Station continues to freeze up.

Thanks.

Dreama

We have been finding a number of items returned to the shelf “not checked in” — yesterday we again found 9 books on the shelf that had not been checked in.     If customers hand items directly to you at the desk, be sure to place those items into the book return or on the red cart that is by the return boxes.  Do not  carry items back to the workroom unless a customer is waiting to have them checked in so a fine can be paid.

We think what might be happening is that staff, in an effort to be helpful, are carrying items back to discharge and automatically putting them on what they assume to be a discharge cart without registering the color of the cart.  Because each staff member arranges carts at the discharge PC by individual preference (some check in left to right and some right to left), items are getting placed on the wrong cart.    Let’s be less helpful and improve our customer service!