It's in the bag!

Last night on the Unley late shift I was chatting to a couple who were so up with thier RFID skill levels that they issued their entire green bag of books by just popping the filled bag on the kiosk platform. It took them seconds and they didn't have to do any manual handling.

They were loving it and said that a library staff member gave them this tip early on in the new look Unley LibraryLand and they have been doing it ever since.

So massive bonus points to whichever STARtastic staff member shared this pure gold tip with them, and thought it was worth sharing with all so you can share it with more of our customers. Go you good things!

Let it go! Christmas is the time for giving

If anyone hasn't seen Ruth and Amelia's crafty work at our little corner of the office up here, come and take a look! We have chosen a Frozen theme, quite appropriate with the temperature of the air-conditioner up here!!

Also wanted to share a story of a lovely family that were in on Sunday. There was an 11-month old girl who was clearly very active and exhausting her parents in the kids area! So much so that the Mum had practically passed out on the couch - arms outstretched - head back - I am sure if we got closer we would have been able to hear her snoring!! 

The Dad was trying to tire out his little girl but you could see he was struggling as well, and another family of a Mum and two young boys (about 10 and 12) came over and started chatting to the Dad, and the two boys started playing with the little girl. They were so sweet with her and were keeping her thoroughly entertained, while Dad could take a seat and just watch on (while Mum still slept in the corner!) 

Jo also had a chat to the family and we discovered the little girl's first birthday was on Boxing Day. Jo asked if they were going to have a party, but they replied they were not because they had no other family here. So that struck a chord with us even more, that they were able to get some help and solidarity from complete strangers in the library. Even with a small language barrier, nothing stopped this other lovely Mum with her two boys giving this family a much-needed break!

Christmas Culling - Pull List Style

I know that you have all read Snowdrop Sparklesparkles latest Christmas missive with such devout attention that you will not need this little Lib Admin enhancing tip, but I'll just leave it here in case...

So at the moment many libraries are preparing to close over the between Christmas and New Year festive period so we are not collecting requested items from other library services. At this point take a second to pat yourselves on the back for the part you are playing in providing a much needed and much used service to our community at this busy (and often socially isolating) time of year. Go Unley LibraryLanders, you good things!

Anyhoo, because of the library closures there are lots of items on the on shelf item lists that we and our vollies do not need to waste precious moments searching for. The easiest way to make this obvious is to dump the pull list into Excel and remove the no-collection-no libraries from the list - and YES, I promise this is easy : )

You can find the PLS instructions @ H:\Library\Library Operations Team\Christmas\2015 - Circulation - How To - Export Onshelf Items into Excel.pdf but honestly, I find it simpler just to:

• Run the Onshelf Items list as per normal (and sort by library if you choose to)
• Click on any item on the list and then press Ctrl + A on the keyboard (all the items will now be highlighted)
• Click on Ctrl + C (this copies the items)
• Open Excel and either right click and Paste, or Ctrl + V, or Use the Paste icon and select Match Destination formatting (my fav as it pastes it in a nice format)
  
  

• Then you can move the columns where required and delete the lines for the libraries that are not wanting items sent
• (If you chose to sort by library then you'll need to sort it back by collection/call number so it's in the right order for hunting)

So go forth and Onshelf Item with efficient ease, and share your festive knowledge with your fellow elves.

Lametta Sparklecake

But wait, there's EVEN more...

...and no it's not steak knives! It's even better... it's another conveniently-located-for-maximum-awesome-operations Circulation Assistant. This one is located on the PC right next to Susie the Slayer Sort Assistant in the Unley workroom.

Super handy for tagging and encoding while popping through black boxes, dexions and HS returns. So much of a nicer and more efficient work flow than having to jump over to the HS issues PC.

So please use it at will to sort out any encoding issues you come across - no need for stockpiling anymore! Continually improving is totes fun.

But wait, there's more...

In addition to the kiosk software improvements detailed in the last post, there is also a brand new compact Circulation Assistant installed on the PC-on-the-bench-behind-the-pod @ Goodwood. So you can now read and encode tags from all three Goodwood staff PCs out in the public space. How cool is that?!? You can now do all of the tag things from all of the PCs all of the time - a definite improvement for our customer experience.

Added bonus update for those who are all about loving the details:
The Circulation Assistant, Alarm Viewer, Sort Assistant and Management Console software has also been updated to the latest and greatest versions @ Goodwood. Unley will start being upgraded this week.

You probably won't immediately notice the difference when using the Sort Assistant and Circ Assistants like you will with the kiosks, but there are apparently bug fixes and improvements so feel free to share improvements you come across while using these!

Get excited - RFID improvements in progress!

You will of course remember that when the latest RFID kiosk was installed @ the 'wood last month that I mentioned that it was a trial for the latest hot-of-the-presses version of the kiosk software.

The good news is the kiosk software has been working great so it is now being rolled out across all of our other kiosks. This has started today with all four Goodwood kiosks now running the latest and greatest.

Wait, you can't remember what is so good about it? Then let me remind you of some of the wondrous improvements our customers will be experiencing:

1. Love thy Platform
   The messages instructing customers to place their items on the platform are now larger, bolder, bordered, and right in the middle of the screen instead of waaaaay @ the top (a special bonus for us less-than-tall folks).
   
    
2. Print or Send - a choose your own adventure...
   It is now super obvious that you will get a receipt on Exit and it has icons for an email and a printer...both in a lovely inviting shade of green, rather than angry-error-coloured red.
   Our customers can choose to Email (Exit with Email Receipt) or Print (Exit with Receipt). I want to hear some yays about this one because it is a serious improvement for our users - yaaaay!
   
3. You've Got Mail
   The emails sent from this new software display much cleaner (without tiny bits of HTML code in the middle).
   
4. Bigger is Better!
   The ordinary text size is larger, so you can only imagine how big the larger text is.
5. Game, SET, Match
   For items that have been encoded as a set, it will now pop up and ask the customer to verify that all of the items are in the set. Remember that it counts the case as an item!

These updates will be rolling through Unley this week, so please make sure you have a play and familiarise yourself with these cool new features so you can see it from the customer's perspective ☺

Friendly Staff :)

Hi team,

Just another compliment we received last week. High five to us!