Present: Djuina Hammett, Julia Bradley, Rose Siegal, Teresa Eshelman, James Diederich, Amanda McClendon
1. Staff Development
Day
Options for parking are: 1. Discovery Green (carpool only;
you had to request a parking pass); 2. Lot H (you had to request a parking
pass); 3. Central Library (if you did not request a parking pass and need to
park, you should plan to arrive here very early since parking is first come,
first served.
2. Training
a. The new training portal is up;
please visit it if you haven’t already.
b. Just for clarification, formal training includes trainings such
as Defensive Driving, NEO, and webinars. The training department keeps track of
these hours and gives official training credit. Informal training is training that is done internally; it’s up to
the manager to keep track of these trainings, since the training department
does not. You can still receive training hours for your HEAR plan, at your
manager’s discretion.
c. There will be a training called
“Hispanics in the Library” on Thursday, May 21st. It will be held at
Central, but you can also view the archived webinar at a later date. Let Djuina
know if you’d like to receive that training and she’ll put it on the schedule.
3. Beautifying Our
Work Space
a. We really need to keep things
neat in our workroom, especially since we will be having guests. We can do very
simple things, like closing cabinets,
that will dramatically improve the workroom’s appearance. Other efforts include
picking up things we drop, lining up carts, and keeping the area near the paper
cutter uncluttered. Let us also try to bring organization to our own personal
spaces as well.
b. Once a week or so, enter the
library from the public entrance and see how things look from that vantage
point.
4. Customer Service
We received a great compliment for our customer service from
one of our patrons yesterday.
5. Updates
a. Our new part-time employee,
Isabel Veloz, will start at Collier on May 11th. She will work every
Saturday from 10:15-5:15.
b. We will host a new trainee, an
Assistant Manager at Frank/Meyer,
next week.
next week.
c. The man who broke into some of
the HPL branches and stole
computers has been caught.
computers has been caught.
d. In the ongoing effort to
streamline NL procedures, Administration is looking for volunteers to identify
processes (such as opening and closing procedures). This is a task that can be
done remotely. Let Djuina know if you’d like to help out.
e. As part of the movement to
de-cluster NLs, Johnson and Mancuso are officially no longer grouped.
f. Financial Services will be at
Collier to provide trainings on SMM on Friday, June 5th. The
training will cover how to accept credit cards, checks, and will provide
hands-on practice.
g. On this note, if there is an
issue with money at the end of the evening that you are unable to solve, please
make a very detailed note of it so Opening staff can call Financial Services.
h. Summer reading registration
begins on Friday, May 1st. If you’ve never registered participants
for Summer Reading before or have questions, please ask Sara—it’s pretty
simple. In the past we’ve had lots of registrants at Collier, so we are looking
forward to a busy SRP.
i. We’ve gotten many donations for
the Book Sale recently. If anyone would like to assist in organizing these,
please let Rose know.
j. Walter is doing a weeding
project this coming Monday, 5/4. If anyone would like to help out, let Djuina
know.
6. Open Discussion
Julia: If a patron
is checking out at Self-Check and needs an item tagged, after we are done
tagging, let’s make sure the patron checks it out before leaving the building;
sometimes they assume that you took the item from them in order to check it out
at the desk.
James: When we’re
wrapping holds for patrons with long last names, sometimes all the information
cannot fit along the spine and the Hold expiration date gets wrapped beneath
the item, making it harder to identify Holds that need to be cleared. Rather
than obscuring the expiration date, we can instead fold over the top part that
says “Houston Public Library.”
Amanda: There’s some shifting going on
in the Kids section. Fiction will eventually have more space in the Kids area. Sara: Thanks to Amanda for taking on a
lot of shifting projects. Graphic Novels will eventually be located between
Fiction and Non-Fiction.
Sara: Please
encourage children to produce art entries for the Children’s Book Celebration.
Age limits are grades K-6. The deadline is currently May 1st, but we
will likely extend it another week or so. There are materials in the Kids
section for this purpose, and if a child wants to make an entry, we can provide
additional art supplies. Winners go to lunch with Jon Scieszka!
Teresa: Carts are often left in the
workroom without labels. It would be great if we could go back to labeling them
so we can either process or shelve them more efficiently.
Teresa: Please email Teresa if you need
to order any more supplies.
