What Puts the I in ILS?

Kimberly here, thinking about what I have started to call "The Aleph Thanksgiving Debacle of 2009."

By now the story is old hat: we experienced a catastrophic systems failure for the two weeks following Thanksgiving because of some planned work to the university's cogeneration plant (the digging over by Courant). We receive heating and cooling from that plant, and they had to take our cooling offline for some reason. While the work was planned, it was started several hours earlier than agreed to, and somehow we weren't given the auxiliary cooling units we needed for our server room. By the time we were alerted that something was wrong, temperatures in our server room had risen to dangerous levels. Long story short: Aleph quite literally cooked. The situation was complicated by one day of "up time" on Friday, December 4th, for which all transactions were lost. (Note: The image at left was pulled off of another blog, and isn't an actual pic of what happened over Thanksgiving!)

This recent downtime got me thinking about the ways we use Aleph. The generic term for a system like Aleph is an integrated library system, or ILS. Integrated because it consists of several modules that all talk to each other. While GEAC was also an ILS, we use Aleph in a much more "integrated" way.

Not only does the library perform the expected functions on Aleph (cataloging, reserves processing, circulation, etc.) but we are using the system in new ways: LP relies on Aleph to check that users are in good standing before they are issued a carrel or locker. Stacks retrieves material for both Reserves and ILL, and not knowing if books were offsite or here at Bobst wasted a lot of their time. While ILL could still place and fill requests, they had to devise alternate workflows for tracking their checkouts. Circulation used the excellent offline circulation module that Aleph offers, but could only perform a fraction of their services. Reserves switched to a totally manual method of circulation, which, although it worked beautifully, was reminiscent of my trips to the Norwell Public Library as a child in the early '70s.

Midway through this downtime, I actually started to think that the fact that this systems failure brought operations to a crawl was...actually GOOD. Good? Really? Sure, it was a ton of extra work for much less than usual productivity and service. Sure, it took it's toll on everyone. Sure, some departments are likely to have clean-up through the better part of next semester.

Call me crazy, but I can't help think about the up time. In the grand scheme of things, even with a failure of this magnitude, Aleph is up 99% of the time. While no system is perfect and we are more than aware of Aleph's quirks, it does do some things well, too. During the up-time we are using the system to its fullest to provide excellent service to our users. We have embraced what it has to offer in a way that is exponentially richer than our use of previous systems. I think that's pretty terrific, and only stands to grow as our understanding of the system grows, and the system itself offers more and more useful tools.

On Tuesday Access Services will join our close colleagues from Avery Fisher Center and BLCC to breathe a collective sigh of relief that the system is back up, and that we survived this very poorly timed down time. At that time, you are welcome to call me crazy in person. I won't try to convince you of my opinion on this, because I'll be too busy enjoying the celebration.

It's so easy being green!

The Interlibrary Loan department was recently asked to participate in a study about ILL "green" practices. The study, conducted by Dennis Massie, the RLG SHARES coordinator for OCLC and California Environmental Associates, a consulting group, hopes to get a snapshot of what Interlibrary Loan departments across the nation are doing to make their day-to-day business more environmentally-friendly.

The concept of a "green" ILL department is still evolving as an idea, considering how much potential there is to overuse resources. In the past, ILL departments everywhere have been unkind to Mother Earth; there are still departments out there that use paper forms for everything. Yet there is a growing interest in using less, not only to save the earth but also because many ILL departments are feeling the economic pressure to cut down and cut back.

For the study, I was asked to describe our current "green" practices. We've taken the typical measures to "green" the department: re-using scrap paper, saving digital files instead of printing, reusing shipping materials (boxes, bubble wrap, etc.), scanning more and photocopying less. Those conducting the study were very interested to hear what we've done so far. They also raised the issue of our shipping practices, something that did not immediately occur to me as a concern for the environment (other than reusing our shipping materials).

So, the study also concerns itself with the "carbon footprint" of our department, the distance our shipments have to travel and how that impacts the environment. To gather this data, I conducted a little study of my own to see how our shipping stats look.

I looked at data for three months (September - November 2009) and here's what I found:

Of the 3,753 packages we shipped in the three-month span,

• 46% of them were sent to the tri-state area (New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut)
• 35% are shipped through METRO Courier (the delivery service administered by the Metropolitan Library Council)
• less than 3% go to Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, or countries overseas

What does this mean? We borrow and lend locally on a very frequent basis; many of our packages don't have to travel far. Nearly half of the books we obtain from other libraries are coming from the tri-state area, resulting in faster service for our patrons and less impact on the environment.

We're starting to think about our "green" practices as extending beyond our paper consumption. The next step is possibly to look at our individual impact on the environment in conjunction with our departmental impact:

• "How come we always seem to run out of plastic water cups when I want a drink? I should really keep a reusable cup at my desk."
  
• "Do I really need a paper bag for my takeout lunch, or can I just carry the container?"
• "What if I just saved my sturdy plastic plate for my one cookie and reused it at the next meeting instead of getting a new plate?"

I wonder if any of you have ever thought about perhaps seemingly unconventional ways to reduce/reuse/recycle in an office environment? Do any of you see a need for a "green" practice in your departments? Is there a workflow or job task that is particularly not "green" and how do you think it could be made more environmentally friendly without sacrificing the quality of work?

Off-Site Storage, and What Lies Ahead

For my first post here, I'd like to stick close to what I've been working on the most: Off-Site Storage!

Bobst Library is but one of many large research libraries that houses portions of its collections Off-Site. In this day and age, space is a huge issue for the future of libraries that wish to expand or even just to remain viable. This is especially true of cities like New York where real estate is gold.

As you all know, the 4th and 5th floors of Bobst are due to be renovated next year. In order to prepare for this, we will need to shift at least 400,000 items out of the building between 1 April 2009 and 1 April 2010. This is far more than our usual output.

Some of this will be accomplished by deaccessioning duplicate materials and a few bound journals, but most of these 400k books will be sent Off-Site.

Here is the current snapshot:



We're getting closer - nearly 80% of our goal completed before the Winter Break!

This has been a huge juggling act for everyone, with every department that you can think of getting involved.

Most of what goes Off-Site is deemed 'Low Use', but as Off-Site holdings have increased over the past year, there has also been a 50% increase in patron requests for Off-Site material.

This could be because Bobcat has become more transparent and user-friendly, or it could be because word has spread that our turnaround time is lightening-fast. It could also be the start of a change in user culture: a new acceptance of the fact that Off-Site Storage is here to stay.

As more of our older material goes upstate to the warehouse, and a not-insignificant number of new acquisitions go directly Off-Site from the Cataloging Department without ever seeing shelving in Bobst at all, we will eventually reach a tipping point where we have more books Off-Site than we have here.

What will Bobst Library look like then?

Is a library with most of its books Off-Site still a library as we know it?

Manners, please

I just had an experience at Moxa that I had to share with you. The person in front of me in line was really quite unbelievably rude! It wasn't that she was hostile, or angry or overly demanding. She just didn't add any of the niceties of polite conversation that even my two-year-old has mastered.

She approached the "Moxa Guy" (those of you who buy coffee at Moxa know who I'm talking about--the black haired guy who is always there, who owns it, I think) and said, "I'll have a large coffee with milk." Then she said, "and I'll have a chocolate croissant." When Moxa Guy brought her croissant on a plate, she said, "oh, no, that's to go."

The whole time I was thinking, "could I PLEASE have a large coffee? May I PLEASE also have a croissant? SORRY, I should have asked for that to go. THANK YOU." It was all I could do not to correct her (see above comment about being the mother of a two-year-old).

What was truly amazing was that Moxa Guy was totally unflappable! He just took it in stride, knowing that it wasn't his job to teach this woman manners. His job was to fix her coffee and croissant, and while I'm sure he finds it a whole lot more fulfilling and pleasant to do so for people who are friendly and polite, he treated her with the same high service standards that he treats the polite people with.

Here's the kicker: when this woman opened her wallet to pay, I noticed she had a Friends of Bobst card. I'm not making this up. It drove home the point that while we occasionally get inappropriate or hostile users, it's much more common that we simply get impolite ones. And, just like Moxa Guy, it's not our job to teach them manners. It's our job to assist them with their library use...even if their mothers didn't teach them to say please and thank you when they were two.

Communicating: speak clearly, listen carefully

For my first post here on the Access Services Blog I am going to talk a little about a class I attended a few weeks ago called Managing Communication Successfully.

In case it’s not obvious the class was about improving ones communication skills. I quickly learned that improving my skills was not just about learning to speak better but also learning to listen better. There are two sides to communication: speaking and listening. During any given conversation we usually participate on both of those sides and should be aware of the barriers that may prevent clear communication.

A few Communication Barriers are:
Unclear message or instructions
Poor listening skills
Languages and cultures
Communication styles
Stress and emotions
Noise
Making assumptions
There are of course many more that we have all experienced.

The class did not just dwell on the problems of communication though. We also discussed constructive ways to improve our communication skills. Both speaking and listening.

Deliver clear messages.
Be succinct
Be specific
Be generous

Ask open questions that encourage longer answers.
Open question: What help do you need? (This prompts a dialog.)
Closed question: Do you need help? (This prompts a one word answer.)

Listen actively.
Face the speaker and make eye contact
Focus on the person’s words and non-verbal language
Ask questions related to what the speaker has been talking about
Empathize

Many of us working in public service positions don’t even think about how much our jobs are really about communication. From writing emails to coworkers to speaking directly with a patron to assist them we are participating in some form of communication every day. Being able to speak and listen well not only makes us good at our jobs it can also make our jobs easier.

(just for fun take an online test about your communication skills at: http://testyourself.psychtests.com/testid/2151)