Nearly Christmas time again….

Where does the time go? It seems like only a few weeks ago that I was getting ready to go on my summer holiday and temporarily moving office to get ready for the refurbishment work in the library….

Back in July, our entire department was decanted to another floor and we have been working from 3 temporary areas which means our service is a little disjointed. Our Membership Desk and Welcome Desk are both quite separate from the main department now and we have had to think about how each service point can communicate with the other as there is no facility for phones. We have tried a few options, including Skype and email but have had to revert to more basic means and now operate a doorbell system. Each service point has a bell that the staff can press if they require help from a Supervisor. The ‘chime’ part of the bell is situated in the main department and if it rings, someone can go out to lend a hand. During quiet times, we can redirect our Membership Desk staff to help with other tasks on the same floor. This means they take the ‘chime’ in their pocket and leave the doorbell at their service point. If someone needs assistance, they can ring the bell and the staff from that area will know to go back to the service desk.

We also now only have one main lending service point so in an effort to reduce queues, we have obtained more self service machines and distributed them on the busier floors. We have also implemented an ILL book return box, made study room bookings online and have also created a ‘stapler station’ ie a table with staplers on it! (there were more staplers originally but they wandered off...) All of these things have drastically reduced the queues are our service points meaning people are only waiting for help with genuine enquiries.

Not surprisingly, as things go with large projects, the refurb is behind schedule. Initially we were expected to be in our new area by now but it looks like it will be at least March before things are back to ‘normal’ (whatever that is!) It will be interesting to see how the new area comes together and hopefully we won’t need to take our very basic forms of communication with us! 

Here's hoping Santa brings us some nice things in a few weeks, I think we deserve it! 

Joanne