Thanks to the wonderful generosity of our staff, the Library is in a position to fill Sue McKnight’s promise to the students of extended hours in Law and EPS libraries over the exam period. This is from Monday 18th October to Wednesday 10th November (including Labour Day).
During this period, both EPS and Law will have the following weekday hours:

Monday to Thursday 8 am to 11 pm
Friday 8 am to 9 pm

There is no change to the Saturday and Sunday hours for all libraries. Education and Macmillan Brown will continue with their current extended hours Monday to Friday. Central Library (L2 & 3) will continue to be open as a study space.
Thursday 11th November (the day before Show Day) all libraries will close EARLY at 6 pm.

Here is the staffing roster for all libraries (on the K drive). Extensions to shifts and additional shifts will be recorded by timesheets.
Posters are being printed and information being added to Library web pages by Library IT.
Helen

The USCA has requested that the Library extends its opening hours for the 3 weeks around exams (18th October to 10th November inclusive). The Library would like to investigate the possibility of offering extended opening hours the week prior to exams and during the exam period. To initiate this discussion the Library needs to know if there are staff who would like to volunteer to work additional hours, or to move their existing hours into the extended hour period . The provision for payment for working additional hours and / working on the weekend will be outlined in your employment agreement. Members of the TEU are welcome to contact TEU if they have any questions about this request, alternatively your HR Advisor may also be able to assist you.

View the UC General Staff Collective Agreement here.
The requested extension is for Law and EPS Libraries:
Monday to Thursday: 8 am to 11 pm (1 hr extra for Law; 2 hrs extra for EPS)
Friday: 8 am to 9 pm (3 hours extra for both EPS and Law)
Saturday and Sunday hours would continue as normal. Education and Macmillan Brown would continue throughout this period offering their current extended hours.
To achieve the extended hours at Law and EPS there are two possibilities for staff who are prepared to volunteer.
1) Extension: adding extra time to a shift or moving their existing start time forward for staff already on shift. This would require at least one continuing/fixed term Library staff member per evening at both Law and EPS. The second staff member could be filled by casual assistance (9 to 11 pm) if available. Total of extra hours for continuing/fixed term staff for both libraries per week is 18 hours; casual staff hours for both libraries per week is 22 hours

2) Addition: achieve longer hours by adding additional staff to end of shift. This would require at least one continuing/fixed term Library staff member per evening for 2 hours (9-11) at both Law and EPS. The second staff member could be filled by casual assistance (9 to 11 pm) if available. Total of extra hours for continuing/fixed term staff for both libraries per week is 22 hours; casual staff hours for both libraries per week is 22 hours
If staff wish to volunteer to work extended hours, please email Helen Doidge with the following details of your offer(s) as soon as possible next week:
1) Extension (extra or moving forward) or Addition
2) Day of the week (for full period or specified dates)
3) Branch

The library web pages have been updated to advise that there will be no new registrations of alumni and external patrons or Reciprocal students and staff (ULANZ/CTA) for the rest of 2010. Decisions about when and where registration will resume in 2011 are yet to be made.
Helen

Joan has requested that Central Library music CDs and Warehouse items that are returned to branch libraries (including Education) be sent in the hamper to Central Library.
The Central Library DVD collection is now shelved on Level 2 of the Education Library and is fully browsable and borrowable.
Helen

In liaison with Library Admin and Library IT, I have updated Horizon calendar for the next 5 days (15th to 19th September inclusive) with the opening and closing hours for EPS, Education and Law as advised by Library Admin. These have been entered as exceptions until the new opening and closing hours for Term 4 are confirmed. MB hours are unchanged at this point. Hours on the web pages are also being updated.

All branches have been asked to shut down and re-open Horizon to pick up the changes today.

The calendar hours for ‘a’ location (high demand items) have been tied to the hours for EPS and Law as they are closing earliest. This means that 3H loans will start going out on overnight loan from 2 pm today, Thursday and Friday for ALL branches including Education even though they close late.
Helen

Gidday and thank you to my library mates!

What a creative bunch of lovely people you all are – this mornings birthday tea was a superb expression of your genius for fine baking and cottage industry!

I thoroughly appreciate your efforts in providing sensitivity training for the Australian scene – I can now quickly recognise dingos carrying babies, snakes, kangaroo poos, crocs, fly swats and sausies on the Barbie.

Its during times like this that I appreciate the depth of collegiality that has always characterised the Library – a birthday memorably celebrated!
Helen

EPS Library had a recent occurence of a random unapproval preventing CKO.
A borrower’s record was opened but when the staff member tried to checkout the items, this message appeared “Borrower unapproved. The borrower record must be updated before CKO can continue.” If you continue past this message, Horizon puts you into the person’s Edit Borrower pages, including on page 2, the ‘Approval’ tick box at the end of the record.

In this situation – please look at the box. If it is already ticked, this is NOT a genuine unapproval. Close the record and try again.

This approval function allows the Library to deactivate a borrower if, for example the student has unpaid tuition fees and must visit the Registry first. I am one of the few people who has authorization to unapprove a borrower and I use it sparingly AND always in association with an Alert Block that explains what the borrower must do e.g. visit Finance and pay their debt. However, every now and again, this unapproval message appears during checkout for no apparent reason and quite unrelated to whether the box is ticked or not.

Despite investigation we do not know the cause of this fault, so it cannot be prevented. This means that library staff must remember how to determine whether the unapproval is genuine or random.
Helen

Update of my previous posting Borrower cards and barcodes
ICTS have now completed reloading onto Horizon the thousands of student records affected. All the obsolete barcodes are now replaced by current ones and the mismatch with data on Payment Plus is gone.
Special thanks to Margaret Adam for facilitating ICTS urgent attention to the problem.
Helen

ICT Service Desk have been asked to investigate some barcode anomalies that occured this afternoon – it is not clear how wide spread these anomalies are. It looks as if old data from Jade has loaded replacing current data on some student records e.g. an old barcode from a lost student Canterbury card has reloaded and replaced the barcode on Horizon of the replacement card.

If a student presents a current Canterbury card and Horizon does not recognise their barcode, please search them by name and if there is a current record, CKO items as normal. Let the student know that this problem is being investigated.

Will update this posting once the problem is fixed, or more information is available.

UPDATE: When there is an incorrect barcode on Horizon it is NOT matching with the barcode on Payment Plus. This has already caused payment failures as each system is referring to a different barcode. This has been passed on to ICTS.
Helen

The borrower records for UC students on Horizon are a copy of their student record on Jade. Sometimes a student fails to give an updated street address or phone number when they enrol and the Library is unable to contact the student by phone or printed invoice.

In this case, feel free to add an ‘Address Correction Requested by Library’ note on their Horizon record, BUT when you talk to them about this at a service desk, please ask them to update their contact details on their UCStudent record. All updates flow through to Horizon overnight and keep us in sync with the source record.

In contrast, if you update their contact details only on Horizon, these changes will be wiped out by any reload of their student record containing the out of date details.
Helen