Highlights from the Public Services Meeting Held 3/12/09

Many of you have used the hand-held scanner recently to scan barcodes on library materials that were not checked out to patrons, but were used in the library. Thank you for helping with the testing and development of this procedure. It has proven to be very worthwhile in the high statistics that it gives us. Please ask Pat for more details of exactly what you should scan when you are working at the Circ desk since this process has evolved since the meeting minutes below.

This spring and summer we will be making a big change in the location, call numbers and shelving of Instructor Reserve materials. First of all, the materials in the Rare Book room will be weeded and the ones we are going to keep will be moved to a small storage room in the NE corner of the 3rd floor. We will then move ALL Instructor Reserve materials into that room, with overflow or future growth of the collection going on the shelves behind the circ desk that currently house the closed IR materials. There will no longer be any IR materials in open stacks along the brick wall in the Reference area.

In addition to this change in location, the call numbers on all IRs will change. They will clearly state that the item is a reserve, it will have the course name and number as well as the first three letters of the instructor’s last name.

And the third change is that all of the IRs will be on the shelf in order of the course name rather than the instructor name.

n You will see the term “library anxiety” used in the minutes. Linda, Byung and Katherine received a grant to fund some training and activities for library staff this year with a goal of helping our patrons overcome their library anxiety. So it doesn’t refer to anxiety that any of us have about working here!