Originally Posted June 3, 2013
As a single librarian, this is finally the end of my first year soloing. Now, I have to close out the year and after a year of trying to develope shortcuts for everything…I have no idea what to do to make closing out the library a little less nightmarish for me. I can say, the best lightbulb ideas were the ones in which I turned to the digital world for assistance. TBC…
June 26 – Yes! Yes! Yes! I figured it out! I mean what to do to make the end of the year close out easier. I know this is not ground breaking or earth shattering for some true tekkies out there but to me ….overwhelming. One of my responsibilities is to keep up with all the Senteos / document cameras / overhead projectors / gaggles of equipment carts / mobile TV-DVD-VCR units. Years ago the equipment carts, TVs, and overheads were removed from our catalog system because even if there weren’t coming back…no one was making staff responsible for the replacement ( I know, another discussion on this) … but the library was still responsible for delving out and monitoring, so we put a setup cart in each classroom consisting of 1 overhead and 1 equipment cart- not to be returned but to stay in that room. Worked out pretty well in the beginning until staff members started moving to new room assignments and or borrowing more than one eq cart from each other or kept coming to the library asking for even more equipment cart of which we no longer had! Gahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! So I would go around and do inventory of each room because there once were 2 of us, so now there’s just me and I don’t have the time to do this.
My TCIS was trying to figure out a smarter way to inventory the tech equipment she needed and so she developed a Word Form and emailed it to everyone. We had to fill in our names, room assignment, and barcode numbers for all the equipment she was responsible for. I thought…what a great idea and decided to send out a link to a survey from Survey Monkey. I was now able to house a June inventory of who had the following:
- Room Assignment & Name
- Number of equipment carts in your room and barcode(s)
- Mounted or free-standing LCD (if free-standing return to library) – with barcode(s)
- Overhead projector or Not w/barcode (s)
- DVD or DVD/VCR working or not working w/barcode(s)
- Verified library account clearance with librarian or library assistant
- Stray library books from classroom (you have no idea how much this one little tidbit helped me out!)
- Summer contact information
No one in the building that was responsible for a classroom could get signed off by the library unless they filled out the survey. The last week of school, I sent out reminder emails w/names of who did complete the survey and there were no complaints of rather I was right or wrong, because Survey Monkey documents the date and time of each submit! Adding the summer contact information made everyone feel more responsible for the equipment and I serious thing we won’t be having as much of a problem at the end of the next school year with keeping up the all equipment.
