Week 1 Semester 1

Week 1 Semester 1 - successfully completed. It has been a very busy week with lots of students and lots of things happening. I like the first week of term because it is new and exciting and it's what you work towards for weeks and months. I was particularly looking forward to it as I have not seen the library or help desk or any part of the University when it is full of students as I only started in my post in June.
The self service book issue and return system worked well - most of the issues we'd had during August have been resolved and its been fairly robust. We need to encourage students to use it and generally raise the profile of the facility, but all in all it's been very positive. The changes to the circulation from the library service desk have also gone smoothly although we now need to look at workflow and what changes need to be made to how processes are carried out.
The footfall, students accessing the library space, has been high but we don't have the exact figures yet from the smart gate software but it will be interesting to compare with previous years. I'm more interested in the 'queue' and looking at ways that we can queue manage and intervene and direct in order to improve the student experience.
The IT Helpdesk has been located in the library for the last two weeks as well as the Library IT Helpdesk and this has worked well. They have offered face to face, phone and email support. There has been high demand for IT help and this has been mainly run of the mill getting started and set up stuff rather than issues. Passwords, accessing emails and setting up wifi are the most common requests. It is interesting that although there are clear instructions on how to do these things on the website, students still want to come along and ask in person. There have been many students wanting to connect to the wifi via phones and tablets and it has been challenging when the phone language settings are not English - one of my greatest achievements this week has been setting up android phones in Spanish.
We have had two new evening and weekend library assistants starting this last week and I've provided some training for them. It's been useful to see all the evening staff as they start their shifts as I'd not had a chance to meet them during the summer vacation.
We interviewed for Information Assistants last Monday and had some suitable applicants that we've offered the roles to. They are going to be starting as soon as possible.
In other news, we spent time evaluating tenders for security firms for our 24/7 opening later in the year.
On Friday a member of library staff was retiring after 16 years and there was a lovely shared lunch and get together.
So far, so good - looking forward to week 2.

Freshers Week

Tomorrow is the first day of Freshers Week. The first day for new students is always exciting when you work in a school, college or university. It's the beginning of a busy year and it's good to get things started.
Tomorrow is the first day of our library self service facility including the self service kiosks - I'm looking forward to seeing how it goes. I think it's as ready as it can be, it's never possible to have everything perfect but we're good to go.



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