Staff Meeting June 27^th 2018

In attendance: John Hong, Richard Ford, Nichole Lewis, Aysia Selders, Aric Jackson, Alisa Baker, Teresa Eshelman, Eric Marques, Cyrano Machey, Krystal Smith, Melinda Campbell, Russ Wagner, Angela Barratt, Edith Partida, Britney Scott, Leona Hoegsberg, Kameshia Smith.

Celebration: Happy Birthday to Richard!

Novelist K-8 Plus Training:  done by Leona

                Resources exist to help advise staff and what books to recommend to kids. 

-          The Kids’ Book lists are on HPL homepage under Learn and Explore.

-          Accelerated Reader Bookfinder:

-          See Handout for more information

Time Policies:  The sign in sheet for this is required. It is between the two staff desktops in the back. All staff are required to review these guidelines and sign.Staff location surveys also due by June 30^th. All staff are also required to fill this out.

Open discussion: Please give all empty water bottles and sodas on Angela’s desk for a Kids’ craft on Friday.

Please remember to shelves mystery books in correct location.

Any damaged books found should be noted and emailed to John. We should also continue to shelf-read to prove that the damaged books are not a recurring problem at COL since Mr. Andrews ban from Collier. Mr. Andrews also has been banned from Oak Forest library, and is currently frequenting Hilendahl. 

Liftoff Houston starts July 26^th. Generally taking place on Mondays and Saturdays. All COL staff must concern ourselves with setups on the assigned days. Liftoff is a series of business workshops for start up businesses to develop and compete for prize money.

Passports: Customers should fill out their own forms. Staff are not to do it for them. Translated forms also are available if needed.

July 4^th: HPL locations are closed.

Staff Meeting June 20^th 2018

In Attendance: John Hong, Angela Barratt, Russ Wagner, Britney Scott, Edith Partida, Aysia Selders, Aric Jackson, Jiny Ung, Krystal Smith, Cyrano Machey, Kameshia Smith, Richard Ford, Eric Marques, Alisa Baker, Robert Vazquez, Teresa Eshelman.

Welcome New Employees:  We have many new faces in the meeting, including trainees and summer interns.  New faces introduce themselves.

Suitability Team Activity :  A fun activity, break off into groups of four. Come up with new questions for four different scenarios. Purpose being, we should be very open minded to get the best possible answers to suitable questions. John added that suitability would go both ways, and we should work to ask suitable questions if we wish to get suitable answers.

                Would you be qualified to be a CoPilot?

                Would you be suitable to go on a road 10 hours road trip?

                Would you be suitable to babysit a person’s only child?

                Would you be suitable to be a doctor/surgeon?

Customer Experience Location Survey:

Email sent out for libraries with extended hours. People should answer the survey attached to this email, due by Saturday June 30^th. Which locations would you prefer to work at if necessary? Some locations will have much shorter hours and others will have longer hours. Any questions, please see John. Collier should not be affected as it is one of the extended hours locations.

Time Keeping Policy: All city departments are having issues. John will send out an email about this issue.

Monthly Reports: John has not yet received all May reports from Collier staff. Reports should be detailed with some of your strengths, challenges, and accomplishments, like programs and customer service. Examples include helping to make displays, clean ups, decorations, etc.  These reports also help with your HEAR evaluations for your supervisors. Even staffers that do not actively engage in programs or activities can still add to these and include on their monthly reports.

Open Discussion:  

Angela thanks everyone for their SRP work, and inquiries about any possible issues, such as the Adult Reading program calendars. Also, please bring craft supplies for craft activities.

Kameshia brought up the issue of translating for PP customers. Please remind them that they must bring a translator with non-English speakers for certain things, such as the Oath, which they must be able to understand and affirm to.  It is a conflict of interest for staff members to affirm to the Oath for the non-English speakers. They may sign but not understand what they are swearing to.  The time slots for the PP Office allows for a brief length of time based on appointments, and any translations take extra time. PP documents exist in translations, already, but affirming the Oath and other parts of the DS-11 require verbal communications.  We must work for a solution for this.

Checking the shelves for damages: A form is available for marking the damaged books and will be placed on Eric’s desk. All staff should mark which shelves they have checked for damaged books of any kind.

Staff Meeting June 13^th 2018

In Attendance: John Hong, Melinda Campbell, Russ Wagner Cyrano Machey, Britney Scott, Edith Partida, Alisa Baker, Teresa Eshelman, Leona Hoegsberg, Nichole Lewis,  Aysia Selders, Aric Jackson, Kameshia Smith.

Scavenger Hunt: We will answer questions and take pictures of these answers in relation to them. We will then come back and work in groups of three to answer these questions. The idea is to take pictures of something you feel comfortable or uncomfortable with in the library. When we came back to the meeting room, we discussed our findings in groups of three.

Update on Mr. Andrews: Update, we are still working on him. We have no direct evidence against him yet, but we are working on building a case on him for messing up the Men’s bathroom and damaging books. We must keep on our guard to catch him in the act. People have been suspended for less, but we are working on a case to suspend him from the whole HPL system.

Food Training: Does everyone have a login for the lunch stats? If not, ask John. Generic: email address, password is held by Melinda. The part where it asks for organization type does not work. Lunch setup: signs and tables chairs setup. TV  or music should also be setup. Cleanup is to discard all the food and clean the tables when done.

Open discussion: 

Hotspots: These are very popular, there is a hold list for them.

SRP: Button machine working well, refer to Angela or Leona if it gets stuck.

June Birthday: will occur next meeting. Richard’s birthday

Teresa also recognized for her years of service.

Collier Staff Meeting June 6^th 2018

In Attendance: Melinda Campbell, Russ Wagner, Edith Partida, Angela Barratt, Teresa Eshelman, Britney Scott, Eric Marques, Richard Ford, Cyrano Machey, Nichole Lewis, Alisa Baker, Kameshia Smith

Passport Verbiage:   Answering the phones, please  try to answer them even though they are ringing off the hook. Answer the call and put them on hold when busy. If the Circ desk is very heavy, peak in the workroom and ask for help. Don’t send the calls back to the PP office, especially when there’s an agent up front and available. 

Appointments;  Passport customers  will ask how to make an appointment, so we should refer them to the website page, www.houstonlibrary.org/passports. We also should emphasize to them to come earlier than their scheduled appointment, and if late they may lose their place in the appointment line.  If they need to reschedule they must first cancel their appointment and make a new one. Encourage the PP customers to make the appointment themselves either at home or on our public computers, don’t do it for them. 

Kids’ shelves during Summer: Kids’ area gets very highly utilized during the summer, everyone will be assigned one particular shelf section to maintain and straighten.

Open Discussion: Richard’s birthday was today.

Kameshia suggested about reading levels for kids’ books. Angela mentioned she does this for new hires, she will try to bring this into staff training as well.  Kids’ books are listed by grade level and Lexile rating.  Not all kids’ in the same grade read at the same level, however.

Kameshia also mentioned that available staff members should sign for delivery when present.

Summer interns are coming on Monday the 11^th. May get more volunteers as well, but only one summer intern for Collier.  Only a few volunteers are still available for the summer.

Cyrano mentioned that when marking items used it is not necessary to discharge items in Sirsi first. Marking items as used will show any alerts for the items in question, such as a hold at another branch.

Alisa pointed out that Collier’s book destroyer has moved into Adult fiction.  

Kudos: Melinda, Lubna ,Angela, John,  Leona, Teresa twice, Nicole, Kameshia, Janice, Eric,

Summer Food Training Sign Up

The link to this training is also posted on the right under 'Helpful Links.'

·             To create an account please go to https://houstonfoodbank.litmos.com/self-signup/

·              If you already have an account, please go to houstonfoodbank.litmos.com, enter your email and password and sign up from here

·             Please use the code Summer2018 (This is case sensitive)

May 30^th 2018 Staff Meeting Notes:

In Attendance: John Hong, Melinda Campbell, Angela Barratt, Russ Wagner, Alisa Baker, Cyrano Machey, Eric Marques, Richard Ford, Nichole Lewis, Janice Gomez, Kameshia Smith, Rene Villacis, Nadia Jackson

Happy Birthday to Kameshia (22nd), John (8th), Angela (20th), and Nadia (10th)!  We sang Happy Birthday to all of them.

True Colors Analysis: By Angela Barratt (click here to view the entire presentation)

 Blues: Janice, Richard, Nadia Go the Extra Mile for Others, Good at Reading People and Relationships. Appreciate honesty and feelings are respected, creates rapport with their team and likes an open and interactive culture. Make a CONNECTION. Ask how weekend went, relationships are before business.

Gold: Kameshia, Russ Work Ethic, Responsible and Loyal, Detail Oriented, Be Prepared. Appreciates clear and detailed process. Give CLARITY through details. Ask if they have any questions after a meeting/discussion.

Green: Melinda, Angela, Edith, Cyrano, Eric  Logical and Challenging, Preserve Wisdom, Like solving problems and are perfectionist, visionaries with long term strategies. Value the big picture and self improvement. Perform best when knowing what and why they are doing. Focus on COMPETENCE through information, skip the small talk and emotions. 

Orange: John, Alisa, Nichole, Britney, Rene Promote action, motivation and excitement. Seize the Moment, encourage playful atmosphere of activity and movement, Think of the flash of fire. Perform well in contests and competitive situations. COMPLIMENT and focus on them. Be to the point or they will lose interest.

SRP: Starts on Friday, June 1^st.

Private Line, #39571:  Still not working, IT is still working on this problem.

May 23^rd 2018 Staff Meeting Notes:

In attendance: John Hong, Melinda Campbell, Angela Barratt, Russ Wagner, Cyrano Machey, Nichole Lewis, Richard Ford, Teresa Eshelman, Kameshia Smith, Edith Partida, Rene Villacis, Janice Gomez, Lubna Qadri, Nadia Jackson, Shanelle Clay.

Introductions:  New staff trainees: Rene, Nadia, Janice, Nubna, and Shannelle.

Team Building Assessment: Angela and True Colors, a personality association game. To  be completed by next staff meeting on Wednesday May 30^th.

Schedule Updates: New things for summer weeks. A Pickup Hour will be included for picking up books, marking them as used, toys arranged, etc. Additional tasks will be assigned, such as XC $. Please tell Melinda any ideas for specific tasks to be done at the end of the day.

Summer Food Handling: Certificates passed out for Melinda, Russ, and Edith for completing the food training at Central.

Outreach Calendar: This will be posted on the Collier blog. Britney is our outreach coordinator. Any outreaches to be done from Collier should be added to the blog as ‘potential outreaches’ and date, time, location, and what kind. These are important, as not all HPL locations do outreaches. Adding to the outreach calendar is simple to do but also important. Outreaches will also be color coded.

Open Discussion: Kameshia mentions that old computer passes should be taken out and thrown away. Also, for new hires, please wait until staff show you how to shelve and shelf read.

Passports:   Most people are making appointments correctly, not many without.  Cyrano mentioned that it’s better if we tell people to have their forms filled out completely before they arrive at their scheduled time. This cuts down on Preprocessing time needed per customer.

SMM: Make sure the ‘Batch Closed’ slips from printer are included in the till, until morning when money is checked and included in the blue bag. Financial Services want us to send in all paperwork and receipts. This includes the PP SMM as well.

John will contact Dimitri to have her give a refresher course to go over all SMM procedures.