The Customer Services team has been adjusting to a new normal like other teams.  Finding a working from home/life balance is a careful balancing act that can change from one day to the next depending on the weather, bubble occupants, general health and wellbeing.  We have some real stars who have been proactive, enterprising, helpful, co-operative and reliable during the lockdown.  May this positive attitude and work ethic spread and continue!

Working from home:  Congratulations to the 70% of our team for reading emails and taking initiative to get things sorted prior to lock down.  This has made quite a difference to personal comfort levels and work effectiveness.  Lesson learned for next time, keep calm, think, and get yourself sorted.  Like others, we have learned the difference it makes between WIFI and Ethernet cable for a stable connection, the power of the mouse, keyboard and a monitor.  Otherwise, most are coping well and even IPAD confidence has soared as team members learn better ways to use these for AskLIVE and other work.

Staying connected:  Weekly Wednesday team zoom meetings are held at 1400.  Our first was 1 April 2020, and we were so happy to see Vivian Ye, who zoomed in from China.  Vivian was able to share a little of her experience being stuck in China amidst travel restrictions.  She is well and looking forward to returning to NZ.  AskLIVE chat, S4B chat, Zoom, S4B video conferencing, emails, Trello, Counterculture, SLACK, and of course the phone have been the main modes of staying connected.  Some team members are taking the opportunity to tee up 1-1 or small groups and this is working well.

Te Rua Makerspace:  Andy is leading our development of Te Rua and is currently working his way through the makerspace documents, big picture goals and framework. He is also building a library of resources to support planning a six week programme to kick things off when students can return to campus.  As part of this, he is also considering online creative tinkering in case there is another level 4 alert. 

AskLIVE: AskLIVE is the information desk in the ‘new’ normal.  This is a priority task as the team covers seven days per week.  It’s been great to have others in the library support extended hours on a flexi basis.  Team members are building their own Kbase of info for AskLIVE.

Social media: Messaging for Easter closure for social underway.  Instagram content creation for how to access information resources online.  Possible mini curious cabinet posts.  Marketing meetings progressing as per usual. Restrictions imposed by UC in the lead up to level 4 have been reduced which enables the team to open up our social media channels.  Key message: Library may be physically closed, but the Library team is working from home and here to help. This is balanced against interesting, relevant content. If you have any suggestions of content to share, please send through to the Library Marketing Inbox.

Distance services: Responding to email enquiries. Prior to the lockdown we were posting items to those who weren’t distance students but who were in Isolation.

High demand: Progressing workflows and liaising with subject librarians around issue stats reports for identifying high use items.  Imports into horizon will take some time, and once these are done, the record can be linked and made discoverable by course, lecturer via LEARN textbook lists etc.

Borrowers: Responding to email enquiries and advising academics of online SharePoint form ‘Service Request for Visitors’.

Learning and development: Trello visual management board, getting to grips with all functions on zoom, practice APA 7^th, LEARN sessions, Echo 360 and Zoom, e-learning student support Q&A, watch VALA sessions. Lego mindstorm, Arduino, and Rasberry Pi.

Essential services:  Laurie is part of the UC essential services workforce and one of the few people required on campus. We are very supportive of Laurie and his contribution to the wider UC effort.