Mid-Spring Catch-Up (Staff Development)

Staff Development

Basic skills - As we all know we are continuing with our basic skills assessment this year. It seems strange that we are once again assessing, however, in our past-faced work place the basic skills necessary to do our work change annually. We will continue to refine these and - of course - integrate new college requirements (ex. Google apps) into our skills sets.

Training new staff - We are still training our new staff. This currently includes our Cypress and RRC Head Librarians, as our new NRG reference librarian, a new staff member in Technical Services and a new SLA and LA for the South Austin Campus. This includes not only management and campus library staff training but also one-on-one and work with mentors but also tours of campuses and meeting with individuals responsible for certain areas. If you haven't noticed already, our training is an ongoing - continuous learning - role and responsibility of all of us. Thanks to everyone who has met with new staff to integrate them into what we do.

Mid-Spring Catch-Up (LS Group Activity)

LS Group Activity

LS Advisory Group/Ad Hoc Workgroups - We are still committed to forming a number of groups and establishing a number of meetings to provide us with diverse input. These activities include:

• An LS Advisory group external to LS with some membership from IRT and external to IRT. I am still working on a draft of a list of members as well as a mission/roles and responsibilities statement and - as planned in the fall - we will plan on a spring meeting.
  
• We are still planning on having a librarian and head librarian workload ad hoc group. As we know, librarians and head librarians' workloads are articulated in Administrative Rules. Using those as a basis, an ad hoc group will look at equity in areas such as team work, facilitator work, reference hours, collection responsibilities - to name just a few areas.
  
• We had our Five or Fewer meeting of librarians in January. It was suggested and we will have a More than Five meeting with the same questions, discussions, etc. to get input from senior staff.
  
• We have a small ad hoc group meeting to discuss media and accessibility, collection management. We will keep you posted of our project and provide a snapshot of media in LS before the end of the spring semester.
  
• Our meetings with Team Leaders, Facilitators and managers continue. Agendas and minutes are posted in the TLF wiki environment.
  
• We continue to have an Opening Day Collection subgroup of CDT. They are already at work on the Elgin Campus.

Mid-Spring Catch-Up (SACS & Other Issues)

SACS, Collections, Teaching & Learning

SACS - I continue to work with the college's SACS coordinator Amanda Karel. I am still working with her on documents for our SACS visit.

Core Materials Collection - Bibliographers are working on creating core print and media collections. These cores will be compared against our existing collections and then be used for the Opening Day Collections for new campuses.

Textbook Collection - We continue to review our textbook collection availability, weeding and circulation.

Teaching and Learning - We continue to assess our Information Literacy program and on March 25th we have a retreat of full time librarians to discuss information literacy and information literacy programs.
New ACC President - I am still completing the packet of documents designed to provide new administrators with overviews of 21st century libraries and - specifically - ACC's library and library system. Plan to meet Presidential candidates on April 4, 5 and 6th when they come to campuses. The committee is currently narrowing the number of candidates down to five or fewer.

Mid-Spring Catch-Up (FYI)

FYI…

>>>>> I am working hard with the Texas Library Association team trying to restore funding to the state agency for libraries and library programs. Keep everything crossed as we try to save funding for our databases to support our programs. Currently we are looking at a 78% cut that we MAY have reduced to an @ 50% cut. Hard to believe I would ever be pleased to be looking at a 50%-60% cut for Texas libraries!

>>>>> We still selecting people and departments to feature in our marketing campaign. We will also be attending a student success marketing meeting on March 4th to determine who is doing what and how we might broaden our partner pool.

>>>>>> We are working with various college groups…the Tutoring Conference, a Tech Student Success in early April and the usual recruitment days. In addition, we are working with an exciting college partner group The Center for Public Policy & Political Studies.

..............................More later!

Safety Issues in ACC Libraries

Thanks for the careful read and comments on my "Safe and Sound" email post Monday. As we all know, IRT administration takes staff safety and security and comfort levels very seriously. To list our work in this area let me reiterate what is out there for you regarding these issues and what is in the works.

Wiki Content - The wiki has a variety of types of information that include links to college information, copies of guidelines I have sent out in emails, scripts to use in relevant situations and information we have created over the years, updated in '07 and '08 and are now reviewing, updating again, and adding to. Although we have an "Emergency Preparedness" area, it combines a number of things that we are separating out.

As to the presence of the Staff Development Team on the wiki, the SDT is:

• reviewing the content on the wiki and revising as needed
• adding scripts to the wiki for handling these situations
• reviewing older emails for current accuracy and adding content from past memos such as the 2008 "Memo from the Dean of Library Services on Campus Alarms: Required Behavior by LS Employees during Emergency Evacuation/Fire Drills"

Training

1. Part of the review of ACC content is the identification of college training related to what we do. We will be recommending some of these trainings for this year.
2. As we all know, our LS all meeting last year was a panel of our ACC police with content in general as well as content prepared just for us/in our space. We received excellent feedback from that meeting and will schedule another one of those when our content has been updated.
3. I will be coming around to each campus and meeting with staff there regarding their own/unique safety issues of their buildings. If you will remember, 10/21/2009, I sent an email around regarding those elements that needed to be in first day/first week training for each staff member. See the content I have included at the end of this email labeled "do you know" as it includes that information and more. HL's/Managers will be working with staff (all staff....all levels and no matter how many hours they work for us) to determine if all staff know the answers to these critical questions prior to my coming out to the campus.

SO...do you know regarding Emergency Management (EM) in your building?

1. Visit each floor of your buildings on campus. Review the following information:

Where are the posted floor plans and specifically where are the emergency exits?
What are the floor plan notations for emergency evacuation locations?
Where are emergency boards/marquees located?
What do the instructions near the elevators say regarding evacuation/in case of emergency?

2. Review the external areas of the building(s) on your campus.

Where is the shelter-in-place on your campus in case of emergency?
Where are the rally points in case of emergency?
Who are the floor managers in case of emergency? How can you recognize them?

3. Note any equipment on the floors outside the library.

Where are the defib machines? Who is supposed to use those? When are they to use them?
Where are the fire extinguishers on each floor?

4. What are the posted/written EM elements?

What number is on the phone for emergencies?
Where is the notification button (right now only at Round Rock) in the library?
If we call for an emergency what is the code?
Who decides an emergency exists and who manages us through that emergency at your campus?

5. Where are any safety materials libraries have for staff?

Where are your non-latex gloves for handling possibly toxic materials?
Where are your face masks staff can and should use if smells or dust or mold make it difficult to breathe?