With only a month left of the spring semester, there's quite a bit to update on. Here are the March updates for the Access Services Department.
Updates:
-For Carnival, April 3rd - April 6th, Hunt Library will close at 6:00 pm on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday without extended hours; Sorrells Library will close at 6:00 pm Thursday and 4:00 pm Friday.
- All DVDs have officially been moved outside the Video Room on Floor 2, and LPs have been located to Offsite.
-Speaking of DVDs, there are free weeded DVDs available on a cart by the printer.
-The week of April 13th is National Student Employee Week! The 30+ students we hire as interns, Stacks Assistants, and Circulation Assistants each academic school year are valuable assets to Access Services. If you see them at the Circ Desk or in the stacks that week, please consider thanking them for their hard work. We couldn't do it without them!
-The application for summer employment at Hunt and Sorrells Library is officially open. Interested students can learn more at https://cmu.libwizard.com/f/library-student-employment.
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Circulations (02/28 - 03/30): 2203
Sorrells - 976
Hunt- 1164
Offsite- 61
Mellon- 2
Sorrells March Statistics:
1,000+ logged interactions at the desk.
We had 20k+ visitors.
Hunt March Statistics:
A total of 107 questions were recorded on LibAnswers.
Temps transferred 500 GV books (entertainment, leisure, sports) from HL3, STACKS-3 to HL2, STACKS-2.
Terrence changed the Alma location field for the GVs from STACKS-3 to STACKS-2.
Temps shifted part of the A & B sections on STACKS-2 in order to empty the bays between HL214 and Staff Lounge. Shannon M. removed shelving and had the wall painted.
Temps transferred LP Collection (13,000) located on HL4 Music Listening Office to Offsite.
Temps emptied music (3,669 pieces) from cabinets in HL4 Music Listening Office. Items were recycled.
Temps transferred 540 laserdiscs from HL2 Video Collection to Offsite.
Temps unpacked boxes (200-300 boxes) at Offsite on Friday (3/14) and Friday (3/21).
There are currently 100 “D” boxes remaining to be unpacked.
Temps will return to Offsite on Friday, April 4th.
If you missed it, here's you round up of Halloween activity here in Access Services.
Here at Hunt we played it low key with Patrick stealing the show in a multi-mask ensemble, Is he Ryan Reynolds? Is he Deadpool? Is he Batman? Whoever he is, he's definitely a super hero when it comes to customer service.
At Sorrells, staff and faculty celebrated Halloween in a big way with an entire week of activities leading up to the day. According to the "Empress of Sorrellia," The subjects and their Empress participated in the annual Spirit Week festivities. Each day held a different wardrobe theme for merriment and the Empress made sure the candy bowl in the citadel entrance hall remained full. Our subjects were spotted by the Sorrellian photographer mid-revelry and those moments were captured for the viewing pleasure of the whole Library galaxy." Loving all of the spirit Adrianna and the Sorrells team put in to celebrating the holiday!
Big news in the ILL world, specifically EZBorrow. On Oct 23rd EZBorrow released its' new My Account feature. The My Account feature now gives you access to current and past requests as well as enables you to authenticate before initiating a search. Additionally you have the option to save searches, save items, and create lists of saved items. You can link to our How To page [.pdf] for a brief overview of how this new feature works.
It's been on my wish list for a looong time and so glad to see it finally come to fruition!
It’s been a busy and exciting month for collection maintenance. First off we completed the inventory in Stacks-3, Oversize-3 and Ref-1. The total number of items scanned on 3 came to 21,379. We found 496 problem items (wrong location, bad call number, etc.) and we were left with an item difference (Alma versus what was scanned) of 1,051 items. For Ref-1 we scanned 213 items. We found a total of 2 problem items and were left with an item difference of 153 items. A big shout out to Gloria and everyone on staff who helped with this. This project has really helped to clean up our physical holdings and reconcile what’s in the catalog with what’s actually on the shelf. Now it’s on to weeding!
In other collection maintenance news, we’ve moved all of the GT’s (costumes, dress, fashion) from the second floor and 3rd floor to the 4th floor stacks and oversize. These collections have been split for some time between the various floors which has led to a lot of items being miss-shelved (as evident in our most recent inventory of the 3rd floor) so it’s wonderful to have them all together in one place. Plus I think it makes browsing the subject area that much easier. In addition to the GTs we will also be working to reunite the TRs (photography) currently shelved on 3 with the ones on 4.
To celebrate spooky season, Anne N. and Lauren C. with input from our student employees, curated a display of books and media (physical and online). The display is located on the Hunt Library Circulation Desk so be sure to check it out before it’s gone!
Looking ahead, we have the Access Services Conference happening November 20th and the 21st which most of us will be attending virtually. I am super excited to learn what’s new and upcoming in Access Services!
Lastly, November 18th is “High Five a Librarian” day so don’t be surprised if I come at you with a high five that day for all of the great work you do!
Happy October everyone! I wanted to take some time and share with you all some highlights since my last post as well as some things to look forward to this month.
First, our very own Charlotte Trexler marked her 29th year employed at the University Libraries! In celebration of this milestone I asked her to reflect back on her years working within the University Libraries. Here is what she had to say.
Amy: What are some of the achievements in your career that you're most proud of?
Charlotte: I’ve seen a lot of change and I feel like I have really grown in my ability to adapt.
Amy: What do you like most about working in libraries?
Charlotte: My co-workers. We’re like a family. And I’m still in contact with a lot of folks who’ve moved on.
Amy: Are there any lessons or pieces of advice you'd pass along to others just starting in the same field?
Charlotte: Don’t take anything too seriously, be flexible and sometimes you’ve got to roll with the punches.
Amy: What are some of your favorite hobbies outside of work?
Charlotte: I do a lot of paper crafting card making, quilling and origami) and I make seasonal wreaths for family and friends.
Amy: What are looking forward in the next few years
Charlotte: Retirement
Thank you Charlotte for 29 years of service to the CMU Libraries and the CMU community!
Looking back on door counts for the month of September, at Hunt we were up 23% from last September. Sorrells saw a small increase of 1% from last year’s numbers. Circ numbers on the other hand increased at Sorrells from 917 items loaned to 1067 for the same month last year. At Hunt we saw a decrease in items loaned from 2120 to 1771.
Finally, in the spirit of Halloween, Anne and Lauren have been working with our students to create a Spooky themed book/media display. The display will be set up at the Hunt Circulation desk in time for Halloween.
October literary events to look forward to this month:
National Cookbook Month! Don’t forget to submit your recipes to the libraries’ collaborative cookbook!
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdrK5cO0RK8p3Gg6DOFuUp0IxZyz52ZEybuGdHgZVKjPccSBQ/viewform
October 16th is National Dictionary Day in honor of Noah Webster’s birthday. Mark the day by learning a new word!
Welcome to week two of the 2024-2025 academic year and boy are we busy! According to the Hunt Library gate count we went from 10,364 visitors in July to 24,596 in August! At Sorrells we went from 6,505 to 13,161. Basically doubling the volume of visitors in just a month's time. Our busiest days in August were Mondays at Hunt and Thursdays at Sorrells. Busiest times were 1pm at Hunt and 2pm at Sorrells. I guess we're high up there on the list of errands to run at lunch? For more Access Services stats, be sure to visit the stats tab on our LibGuide.
In addition to the steady flow of visitors we've extended hours at Hunt; 8am-3am, Mon-Fri, 10am-3am Sat. and noon-3am on Sun. Access to nonaffiliates is limited to the hours of 8am-7pm (campus-wide) and the Circulation desk itself closes at midnight, Mon-Fri, 6pm on Sat and 8pm on Sun.
Other newsworthy items since I last wrote:
Lastly, be sure to mark your calendars for the following literary holidays:
Happy Fall Ya'll!
Welcome to the first ever Access Services' blog post.
Our LibGuide has launched! It's still a work in progress so expect there to continue to be changes as we figure out what's the best format for us to bring to you all things related to Access Services.
As a reminder, this guide is private (i.e. not searchable from our public LibGuides page) so save the link!
https://guides.library.cmu.
Here are some updates across the Access Services' department.
The Video collection is back to regular operating hours, additionally the "team-video" slack channel has been revived and Lauren will be posting updates related to the collection every Thursday. So look for "#team-video" in Slack and subscribe!
Our Special Borrower's card recently got a "glow-up." Thanks to Anne and her Canva skills. Below is a comparison of the old card (top) with the new card (bottom).
In Stacks news, Summer is currently in the process of shelf reading the Mellon collection, with the help of a student she's made it through all of reference and 50% of the circulating collection. At Hunt, Gloria and her students are making serious progress with the journal weeding, having moved on from weeding the discards to weeding those destined for Offsite. So far they've processed 130 boxes of journals destined for Offsite, currently stacked and ready to move out.
Lastly, some updates regarding hours. Carnival is next week! Hunt and Sorrells will be reducing hours as follows: Thursday, April 11th 7:50/8:00am - 6pm and Friday, April 12th, 7:50/8:00am- 6:00pm/4:00pm. Regular hours resume Saturday, April 13th. And the end of the semester is nearly upon us! We will be once again extending our hours for Finals (at Hunt) starting April 20th until May 5th. Hours during this time will be Mon-Fri, 7:50am-3am, Sat., 10am-Midnight, Sun, noon-midnight.
And that's a wrap!
Amy R. Perrier
Access Services Manager