I was recently re-reading Work Group I Final Report, and they brought up a number of issues which I think we need to address and try to put behind us—because they are keeping us from being as efficient and effective as we could and should be. Among the issues:
· Delayed or failed decision making: employees have become frustrated by pouring energy into a project or idea only to have it fall apart when no one will make a decision to carry it forward. This is a frustration that I too often experience as well. My proposed solution—be personally more accountable and ask others to be also. I am going to try to make sure that when a problem is identified, the responsible party is identified—so be warned!
· Divisive leadership in the past has led to a “Them against us” mentality. I sure hope this is no longer the case; I have continuously stressed that I have an open door policy; and I have done my best to stay in close communication with the Library. More importantly, I will never knowingly pit one against another. The Library is One Team—we all should be serving the same customer—our students, faculty and community.
· Will the Library be departmentally isolated as in the past or will there be a greater emphasis on teamwork to accomplish task? Yes, we are about teamwork.
· The subject liaison system needs immediate attention—I couldn’t agree more. This needs to be a priority for the Library.
· All departments could benefit from procedures wikis. Who can lead this for us?
· Marketing the Library is essential. Yes, it is. One of the most important marketing and outreach opportunities we will have in the near future will be the Chancellor’s and Provost’s visit to the Library on Thursday, September 13. We know that the Library is the Heart of the Campus—but sometimes it is too much taken for granted—and our users don’t really understand how we have adapted to the new “electronic reality,” while still needing to maintain a place for students and faculty to meet, study and do research.
· The entire student hiring system, including balancing the investiture of time to train students against the high turnover rate, the need to keep students occupied during slow times, and the attendant paperwork that consumes much time. I have asked CJ to take this task on, but also let me say that I will never advocate that we stop hiring students—despite the hiring, training, and retention problems. Providing our students an opportunity to work on campus and learn new skills is one of our main responsibilities—and provides a learning opportunity ever bit as important as the classroom.
· Committee work takes up too much time. Does it? How can we function w/o committee? I do like the suggestion that we learn how to run meetings better and more efficiently, these include: prepared agendas, information sharing before meetings, etc. Again will ask CJ to provide some training for all of us in this important skill.
· We need to have a better calendaring system—let’s ask our friends in Computing, Digital and Web Services to work on this for us.
· Why have so many of us created ghost systems for tracking orders, acquisitions, and cataloging. R2 identified this problem as well and it really needs to be addressed.
· Finally, a centralized system of new staff and faculty mentoring would allow newbies to receive all the information they need to be successful. I have asked the Faculty Affairs Committee to look into this; once we have that process moving forward, we will address the same issue for staff.
What did you find interesting or noteworthy in the Work Group's Report? What should we move on?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
7 comments:
I don't think we need a better calendaring system. In spite of the previous training sessions held by systems [good ones by the way] it sounds like it's time to offer yet another round of training to use Outlook. But then, can we please tell people that they are actually REQUIRED TO USE IT? If I get one more email asking about available times to meet, I am going to scream. I get these from all levels of staff and faculty, from all over the library. Use the meeting request feature! We all work with software a lot more complicated than Outlook, it's not that hard to use. I've never known anyone in systems that would refuse to train anyone on software. If you can't use it, just ask. They will be glad to help you or find you tutorials/online demos/documentation, or whatever you need. No I don't work for systems, but they do have competent, friendly people that are capable of training you to use the important features of Outlook.
As long as people don't keep their calendars up to date, the meeting request feature is useless. The reason e-mail goes out about when people are available is because some of us get tired of using the meeting request feature, only to have the request declined by one or more people who gave no indication on their calendars that they would be unavailable to meet.
Well then people must have "ghost systems" for their calendars too. If they know to decline a meeting even though their calendars aren't up to date, then they must be tracking their appointments elsewhere. Maybe we need to eliminate the "ghost calendars" along with the rest of the ghost things. Let's bring in a poltergeist consultant.
There are two parts to the improved calendaring system. The first is that we should all be keeping our calendars in Outlook up to date, and yes, it should be required. The second part concerns an all-in-one calendar in the lobby of classes, events, workshops, etc. that are taking place in the building. That is so that people who work in the lobby area of the building can answer patron questions. As it stands, Circ, Security, and Reference often aren't informed of what's going on and so cannot answer these questions. It frustrates the patrons to no end and doesn't make us look very good.
The Outlook calendar system works quite well for those who take the time to learn it. My previous library required technology standards for all employees. Using the Outlook calendar was one standard. Perhaps our new director will "raise the bar" and actually implement standards of operation. Oh, wait! Wasn't that exactly what the former director tried to do before he was shown the door?
It is interesting that the issue of calendaring has generated so much discussion--which leads me to believe that it is an important one. I will ask CDW to look carefully at the training that they offer on Outlook and it is possible that we can make the training mandatory--usually, though, I like to lead the horses rather than make them drink...more to come on this. As to the Union Calendar in the lobby--that issue seems almost impossible to handle without an automated solution!
Calendaring as the hot topic - who would have guessed? First let me say I think comment 4 (anonymous) hit the nail on the head. It is the lack of ONE calendar you can quickly look at and figure out where the wandering student belongs that I think was the concern in the report. Believe it or not, some students don't know what class they are in that is meeting in the library. I have asked a couple of folks in CDW to investigate if there is a way to merge calendars - like the 1021, 1022, admin conference rooms, etc. We'll keep everyone posted!
Trust me there WILL be training on using the calendaring function. Yes you can use Outlook and see if someone is available or busy without having full rights to their calendar. I'm all for saying if a meeting is scheduled and you don't keep your calendar up to date, then no one is rescheduling it just for you.
As for the systems liaison program - yep it is broken. CDW has been discussing what we would need in a new model. Stay tuned.
Post a Comment