Knowledge Exchange: The Results Are In!

We've tallied up the scores from the post-assessment questionnaire for Knowledge Exchange and here's how we compare:

Before Knowledge Exchange

The questionnaire was taken by 34 staff and supervisors from Access Services.

Circulation, 6.12 familiarity rating, 47.6% correct

Delivery Services, 3.97 familiarity rating, 16.5% correct

Interlibrary Loan, 4.21 familiarity rating, 44.1% correct

Library Privileges, 5.79 familiarity rating, 84.7% correct

Reserves, 5.38 familiarity rating, 63.5% correct

Stacks, 5.81 familiarity rating, 67.6% correct

Fun Facts:

• The question most people answered correctly was “What is the shortest length of time someone can rent a locker for?”
• The question most people did not answer correctly was “What type of items can be requested through Delivery Services?”

After Knowledge Exchange

The questionnaire was taken by 36 staff and supervisors from Access Services.

Circulation, 6.97 familiarity rating, 43.8% correct

Delivery Services, 5.5 familiarity rating, 30.4% correct

Interlibrary Loan, 5.86 familiarity rating, 37.3% correct

Library Privileges, 7.2 familiarity rating, 83.3% correct

Reserves, 6.7 familiarity rating, 71.1% correct

Stacks, 6.8 familiarity rating, 31.2% correct

Fun Facts:

• The question most people answered correctly was a tie between two questions:

"Yes or No, Can a NYU student who has forgotten their ID come into the library?"
"What is the shortest length of time for which someone can rent a locker?"

• The question most people did not answer correctly was:

"What is the fine limit that will cause a patron to have a University Registration hold?"

Conclusions

Familiarity went up across the board. This shows people are more aware of what goes on in Access Services departments.

Familiarity Rating Chart




Delivery Services had the biggest gains in correct answers and Reserves also had a small increase. The percentages of correct answers for other departments curiously went down. This may have been due to the large number of post-assessments that were left blank (no answer was given for many questions).


% Correct Answers Chart

Leave a comment: What do you think of the results?

Questions and Correct Answers

Circulation

How many days does a patron have to return a recalled item before being charged a fine?
Fourteen (or two weeks)

What is the fine limit that will block a patron from borrowing materials?
$5.00

What is the fine limit that will cause a patron to have a University Registration hold?
$60.00
(A University Registration hold is a block on a patron's account that prevents them from registering for classes and from graduating)

How many searches are conducted for a Claim Returned book?
Five

How many days after a Quick Search is placed will the Circulation Department conduct a check of the stacks for the missing item?
The following day (or one day)

Delivery Services

Who can request materials to be paged and/or scanned?
NYU Faculty
NYU Abu Dhabi Staff
NYU Abu Dhabi Students
NYU Abu Dhabi Faculty
NEW! Since the post-assessment, NYU PhDs and NYU TAs have been granted privileges
Also, any NYU patron abroad (regardless of status) can request scans of NYU Bobst material if they use the Delivery Services options on the ILL request forms on the web.

To which libraries can paged materials be physically delivered?
Bobst
Courant
ISAW (Institute for the Study of the Ancient World)
IFA (Institute of Fine Arts)
Jack Brause (formerly Real Estate Institute)
Abu Dhabi

What types of items can be requested through Delivery Services?
Regularly circulating Bobst books
Regularly circulating Bobst Offsite books
Regularly circulating Courant books
Media from the Avery Fisher Center
Book chapter/journal article scans

On average, how long does it take to ship items to Abu Dhabi?
Three days

To which libraries can Bobst and Courant items be returned?
Bobst
Courant
ISAW (Institute for the Study of the Ancient World)
IFA (Institute of Fine Arts)
Jack Brause (formerly Real Estate Institute)
Abu Dhabi

Interlibrary Loan

What is the maximum number of times an Interlibrary Loan item can be renewed?
Unless the item indicates NO RENEWALS, a patron can request a renewal online one time. They must contact the ILL office for subsequent renewals. All renewals are granted at the discretion of the lending library.

True or False, Interlibrary Loan books can be renewed through the patron's BobCat account.
False, patrons must go through their ILL account to renew ILL books.

From the list below, please select the patron types that can use the ILL service at Bobst Library:

a. NYU Employee Family
b. NYU Polytech Students & Faculty
c. NYU Medical or Dental Students & Faculty
d. New School Students & Faculty
e. NYU Law Students & Faculty
f. NYU Abu Dhabi Students & Faculty

NYU Polytech, NYU Medical, NYU Dental, and NYU Law all have ILL services through their home libraries, not Bobst.

True or False, All Interlibrary Loan items are available for patrons to pick up at the Circulation Desk.
False. "Library use only" items are kept at Avery Fisher Center, Reserves, and Fales.

Which of the following is NOT a method that patrons can use to request Interlibrary Loan items?

a. Through the library's website
b. At the Circulation desk
c. Through the BobCat catalog
d. Through the Arch
(The Arch is what the "Articles & Databases" section of the website is called.)

Patrons cannot request Interlibrary Loan items at the Circulation Desk. Thttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifhey can pick up ILL items there, but they cannot make requests there.

Library Privileges

Yes or No, Can a NYU student who has forgotten their ID come into the library?
Yes

Yes or No, Can anyone purchase a membership to the library?
Yes, unless they are on the "PNG" (persona non grata) list

Yes or No, Can the general public gain access to Bobst with a referral from the New York Public Library?
Yes, with a METRO Title Referral Card

What is the only kind of personal storage available in the library to undergraduates?
Lockers

What is the shortest length of time for which someone can rent a locker?
One semester

Reserves

Which of the following is the correct list of current loan periods for materials held on reserve?

a. 2-hour, 4-hour, 1-day
b. 2-hour, 4-hour, 3-day
c. 2-hour, 1-day, 3-day
d. 4-hour, 1-day, 2-day

True or False, Patrons can email scanned microfilms and fiche to themselves directly from the scanning machines.
True

True or False, The Reserved Department is responsible for the processing and re-shelving of the Leisure Reading collection located on Lower Level 2?
True

True or False, The Reserves Department loans out white board markers to patrons.
True

Which of the following does the Reserves Department NOT house:

a. Offsite "Library Use Only" materials
b. Interlibrary Loan "Library Use Only" materials
c. Avery Fisher Center Reserves materials
d. NYU Bookstore Course Packs

Stacks

What roles do the full-time staff play in the stacks?
Oversee assigned floor
monitor work of part-time staff
delegate tasks to part-time staff

What are the responsibilities of the stacks in general?
Shelve books
Straighten and shelf-read
Floor pick-ups
Help patrons
Shifting

Who should be notified about problems in the stacks? For example: loud disruptive staff, books out of order, patron needing help.
Ted or Pablo

What are Ted's and Pablo's responsibilities?
Ted: leads department projects, manages full-time staff
Pablo: manages part-time staff, deputy department leader

From where are stacks part-time staff recruited?
Local high schools and NYU

Offsite...right next door?

Last week I attended the 12th Interlending & Document Supply Conference, titled "Resource Sharing in the Digital Age," held in lovely Chicago, Illinois. Over three jam-packed days we learned from ILL & delivery services colleagues from all over the world, including Italy, Germany, China, Zimbabwe, Australia, Canada, Turkey and the US.

On my final day in Chicago a group of us toured the Center for Research Libraries (CRL) and the University of Chicago Mansueto Library.

Stacks of newspapers at CRL

The newly constructed Mansueto Library demonstrates an interesting approach to "offsite" storage. Directly next door (and connected) to the University of Chicago Regenstein Library, Mansueto has a storage capacity of 3.5 million volumes, housed in a 50 foot tall facility, underground!

One of five aisles of storage

The ground floor of the library has the "Grand Reading Room" and Circulation Service Center on one side, and the Library's Preservation Department, complete with laboratories for conservation and digitization, on the other. This entire space is covered by a glass dome, 35 feet tall at its highest point. Mansueto is truly a striking structure.

David Bottorff, Head of Stacks for Regenstein Library, shows us the Grand Reading Room

Amazingly, in an average of five minutes after placing a request, items are delivered from the storage area to the Circulation Services Center. Check out this video to see how it's all done:

Banned Books

Hey everyone!

It's Banned Books Week so get out there and read a banned book!

Here's a list of banned books and here are the reasons why they were banned.

I'm reading As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner.

What are you reading? Comment on this post and let us know!

Openbare Bibliotheek Amsterdam

I recently joined the OBA, Amsterdam's Public Library. Join
really is the operative word here, because while access to the building is open to everyone, circulation privileges are only given to those who purchase an annual membership. This is pretty typical for European libraries.

While the cost is certainly reasonable (27 Euro which is about$36). Not a huge sum, but after I joined I realized my branch has about 10 English language books for preschoolers, which is the primary reason I joined. However, they do have a reasonable DVD collection which can be charged out for a modest 1 Euro per title, and most DVDs offer soundtracks in multiple languages, or at the very least (for adults anyway) subtitles.

One of the self-check machines, the only option for checking out or returning material

My local branch reminds me a lot of a branch of NYPL, mainly because it's in the same type of 1930's civic building. What is different is how automated the branch--and presumably the system--really is. There is no circulation desk. The lobby includes two service desks: one to generally assist with holds, internet log-ins, directional questions, etc. and the other to assist with memberships. Reference desks are elsewhere. In the lobby not only are there 2

self-check machines, there is also a self-service machine for paying fines an fees. Users are responsible not only for checking out their own materials, but also for checking them in! This has been challenging for me because the self checks are in Dutch (the payment machine offers an English option).

The payment kiosk, which allows you to put credit on your library account. This is useful not just for fines, but for utilizing library services for which there is a fee

My main disappointment with OBE is that their catalog does not allow limiting by language. I wish I could search generally for children's books and then limit to English, the way that our

Primo installation allows, since their discovery tool allows me to place requests for books from other branches (and I understand the main library has a much more extensive English language collection).

It will take a little time for me to decide if my library membership is worth it. Some time, a few more check-outs and a visit to the main library, which I think has a larger collection in English (as well as bilingual story hour). But, to learn about a foreign library first hand I suppose $36 is a small price to pay.

Thanks to RFID tags in all the books, these gates sound if a user attempts to leave the building with an improperly charged out book.

Note: While refining this blog post and I was able to figure out the language limit in OBE's catalog! If you select the AquaBrowser link from the English language home page, the catalog options allow a language limit. Now I have to go back and tell the librarians about this, but first I'm off to place several requests...

Students! Help!

Right now, most of us are really itching for student workers to help in our departments.

Hiring students seems like it would be pretty easy, since there's no shortage of them going from department to department asking about jobs. So what's the hold up? Why does it take so long to get new students hired?

Here's why:

Job Postings or Job Fair
This is how student supervisors find students to hire. Jobs are posted to NYU CareerNet. Student supervisors can also accept resumes and applications at NYU-hosted job fairs. Whether you post a job or go to a job fair, you usually receive 50+ applications (in a day at the fair or after 3-5 days of an active job posting).

Serious about Hiring Students
Since we want to hire students who will
a) work well
b) work when we need them to work
c) not call out sick all the time, and
d) hopefully stick around for more than a semester
it takes some time to fish through the 50-100 resumes and find the good ones.

Interviews
It's not unreasonable to want to meet the students you might hire, so you've got to interview them. Scheduling student interviews is a nightmare, especially at the beginning of the semester. They are moving into dorms or apartments and figuring out their class schedules and extra-curricular activities. Even if you're ahead of the game and post your job listing in early August, you usually can't schedule the bulk of your interviews until late August/early September because the majority of students do not live in NYC for the summer. So, there's this race to try and schedule them before school starts, which almost always ends up spilling into the first or second week of classes. Students apply to multiple jobs, have multiple interviews; sometimes your interviewees cancel because they accept another job, other times they have to reschedule for some reason or another. Pretty soon, your list of 20 potential student employees drops to 7 and then you have to go through more resumes! (You get the picture.)

The Wasserman Walk
And then there's the Wasserman form. Students who seek an on-campus job must fill out the correct form and take it to the Wasserman Center for Career Development (during their business hours) to be signed. This verifies that they can hold an on-campus student position. Part of this form requires them to verify their citizenship or visa status (I-9 verification); for this, they need multiple forms of ID. Sometimes they even need their birth certificate, which they have to have their parents mail to them. (I mean, what undergrad brings their birth certificate to college? I would have never thought to pack that.) The form has to be complete and signed by Wasserman before a student supervisor can accept the form and hire the student. If a student brings you an incomplete form, you have to send them back to Wasserman and then the student has to bring the form back to you. Faxing and scanning don't help with this process; a lot of footwork on the part of the student is required.

Wait Three Days
Once a student supervisor has a completed Wasserman form and wants to hire, they fill out some more forms and take all the paperwork (or have the student take the paperwork) to the Human Resources office on the 11th floor. Human Resources needs at least three days to file paperwork and get students into the MyTime system before they can start working. During this time, though, you can confirm work schedules and schedule training for new students.

* * *

As you can see, there are many chances for the process to be delayed. Compound this process by the number of student hires you need to make and you realize that it could easily take two or more weeks before your department has enough students. (Not to mention the time it takes to train them all!)

Streamlining the Process
There are a few things that I've done to streamline the process:

1) Before I even look at resumes, I send out a pre-screening questionnaire via email to all applicants. This narrows my prospective candidate pool by at least half. I narrow it down further by going through resumes until I have 1.5 students for every 1 position available (so I'll interview 9 students for 6 positions).

2) I send out a list of available interview times via email to all candidates and have them sign up for a time. This works better than emailing students individually. It's first come, first serve and if they aren't available for any of the times on the list, then I say "sorry, no interview."

3) I tell the students that they must have a completed Wasserman form before they come to the interview. That way, if I choose to hire them, I can go ahead and submit their paperwork.

Even with this streamlined process, it still takes a while. For example, I sent out the pre-screening questionnaire on September 4, conducted interviews September 8-13, and my first student hire is starting September 21.

Unfortunately, the steps of the process that take the longest (Wasserman form, HR's "wait three days") are things that cannot be changed. I've streamlined what is within my power to control.

* * *

The other Access Services Supervisors and myself face this student hiring process every year (and sometimes every semester). No matter how early you start, how prepared you are, or how eager you are to hire, there are a number of other factors that delay the process more than we would like.

I recall that one of our potential working group topics is to address student hiring and student shortages during crucial periods of the semester. It is still on our radar and something that Access Services is planning to organize.

But in the mean time, does anyone have suggestions/comments/questions/feedback about the student hiring process?

"No Room for Books"

A few months ago, an article appeared by one Kevin Kiley on Inside Higher Ed entitled "No Room for Books". It's about the University of Denver's plans to move a whopping 4/5 of the Penrose Library’s holdings into offsite storage and change the building into an '"Academic Commons," much like we have been doing here at Bobst.

A friend sent me this article, wondering what I thought of it in light of my job as Offsite Storage Supervisor. You can read the full article here, but here's an excerpt:

The proposed change has raised the ire of some arts, humanities, and social science professors who say that, while impressive, technology hasn’t yet replaced a good old-fashioned trip through the stacks. They argue that the administration dropped the changes in their laps without consulting them and that it will harm their main mode of research.

"You would never ask a scientist to get rid of his or her laboratory," said Annabeth Headrick, an art history professor. "But that’s exactly what’s being done to us."


Although I remain sensitive to faculty concerns and appreciate a good old-fashioned browsing session as much as anyone - and I must stress that I don't know whether there is truth the the assertion that faculty at Denver were never consulted - I must admit that my first reaction to the above is basically, *Sigh*, here we go again.

At NYU, as with other large libraries utlizing offsite storage space, we've been grappling with these concerns for years, and have had little choice but to get with the times in order to keep our library alive and vibrant.

At Denver, however, the plot thickens:

Once the renovations are complete, the university will bring back some books and leave others at the storage facility. The original plans -- which did not cause alarm -- called for 80 percent of the materials to return to the renovated library, leaving behind seldom-accessed journals and those with digital replacements, government documents, and little-used books.

But the university announced to faculty members last week that the renovated library would now only hold 20 percent of its current collection, much to the surprise of professors.

20%?!!! Holy swiss cheese, Batman! I don't know what the Penrose Library's spacial situation is, but it seems shockingly drastic to me to reduce a collection by that much in one fell swoop.

As I've said before, in my very first post on this blog, "As more of our older material goes upstate to the warehouse... we will eventually reach a tipping point where we have more books Off-Site than we have here."

But to the remaining nay-sayers, we can say that this happened organically, and over enough time that most people have gotten used to it, and have reported that they are at least relatively satisfied with the new methods of research that they've developed as a result.

The Next 12 Months

The next 12 months are certain to be a time of change for all of us. I’m currently planning that July 15^th will be my final day before my one year leave-of-absence begins. I’ve been working with Lucinda and all of the Access Sups to make sure that all of my responsibilities are covered and that I’m not even missed!

Beginning in May, Sydney assumed responsibility for Aleph circulation functions, including all administration and leadership related to circulation, reserves and media booking. In this capacity she leads two new groups: a group of Aleph circ supervisors from throughout the consortium and another a group of Aleph “techy type,” administrators from Bobst, Courant, Cooper and NYU Abu Dhabi.

We have some big changes planned in Stacks to get ready for more renovation, including a shift on 9 and moving the Ns from 7 to 9. Shawn Jacobus from the Libraries’ Budget and Planning department will run point on this and be sure to get Ted or Lucinda involved when needed.

Deb returns in early August, and Jen returns in early September. I’m really grateful to Eileen, Pat and Sydney for stepping in to cover these absences. While I’ll be gone by late July and Kristina doesn’t start until September 12^th, I’m sure with everyone else’s vacations, Lucinda’s leadership and the generally slow pace of August, we’ll be in good shape to coast until Kristina Rose, our

former Access Services Librarian, begins in mid-September.

Once Kristina arrives she will be working Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, 25 hours per week. She will be responsible for the overall administration and leadership of the department, and the related goal of improving our organizational climate. You may wonder how my job has been distilled into 25 hours per week. Two factors contribute to this: Sydney’s ownership of Aleph issues and a shift in focus to Access Services leadership only. OK, there’s a third important thing we all know: Kristina is awesome.

The exact projects Kristina will be working on have not yet been determined or prioritized, but are likely to include: Aleph advanced training, reserve linking improvements and publicity, an Access Services Open House, an Offsite inventory, unifying the service philosophy in Access Services and beyond, and a Bobst inventory sample to name a few. Clearly these are projects that she will not undertake alone, but will work with various supervisors, departments and groups to get the completed.

And, what will I be doing? Living in Amsterdam and learning about a new culture. Mostly spending time with my family, including my European in-laws (they are great—why do people make in-law jokes?). I may also be working part-time (very, very part-time) with an international library organization, but I don’t yet have any details to share on that. I’d like to use my time to think about the strategic direction of Access Services over the next few years and possibly brush up on some skills I’ll need as we work to create the library of the future (which means I’ll have to identify those skills first…). And, I have a goal to cook more, which is something I really miss and don’t have time for now. I’d like to learn enough Dutch to handle a brief, polite conversation (like the sentence, “do you mind if we speak English?”)

which I should be able to do thanks to Mango a cool tool that we have here at NYU. And, I plan to publish the occasional blog post.

So, take care everyone. I have very mixed emotions about leaving but one thing I’m certain of: between our intelligent and motivated frontline staff, our dedicated and strong supervisors, and Kristina as our awesome interim department head, I am leaving the department in very capable hands. Tot ziens en veel geluk!