First two weeks of Spring semester

We have gotten through the first two weeks of Spring Semester, and it was Hell!!!! With the economic downturn, the library and the college as a whole are seeing way more students. Comparing the first two weeks of this Spring to Spring '08, we saw an increase in gate count of 14% or 15,228 patrons. We also managed this time while short staffed due to medical leave of some of our team.
Now, as things calm down, I can focus on other matters. We are currently doing our best to reduce thefts in the library and a reporter from the Star News came to the library to do a story on this. Our Library Tech. II recognized one thief we had a photo of and was able to contact police and have him apprehended.
Personally I will now return to my work on Counting Opinions, which is still not up and running. I have made some appointments with my contact there requesting further training and hopefully by Spring Break , we will be using this product. I am also planning to teach LIB 10A for the 3rd time and hope to improve on the last two efforts.
I will unfortuneatly miss the ACRL and many other conference opportunities for personal matters, but look forward to going in the future.

Implemention takes forever

I continue to work with Counting Opinions to get our library survey up and running.  I have also been working with the data maintenance system they have, which is also taking much more time than I expected.  Implementing a completely new program/software can take much more time than expected as you learn how to use the different functions.  Especially when you must do so over the phone and internet instead of in person.

I also completed the NCES Academic Library Survey with my library's dean, which provided insight into some of the statistics and data I will want to maintain in this new system.

We have recently hired one new student assistant and promoted someone to a supervisory position in preparation for the Spring Semester starting on Monday.

Back to work

The holidays are over and we have started the Winter intersession here at PCC. I have had two online conferences with our contact from Counting Opinions, and our library survey is nearly ready to go live. I will then have to advertise and market it in order to get the most useful results. I have also been toying with the LibPas side of Counting Opinions used for accumulating and reporting library data and statistics. I am making baby steps, but slowly coming to understand it better. I will meet with my Library Dean today and discuss what kinds of reports she currently produces and see how we can use the LibPas service to make reporting easier.

We will also be losing a student supervisor as he prepares to graduate from Library School, and I am working with my Library Techs to select a student assistant for promotion to this position. I will also need to hire 1 or 2 new student assistants, one of which I believe I have already decided on from past interviews and hirings.

I really hope to have some time to tinker around more with our Facebook page in order to advertise it as well come Spring semester. The library is now on our new network and we have a strong wireless signal throughout the building. This will make our students very happy and I assume more students will start bringing their laptops now that we have a wireless network that functions properly.