Nancy Neal's Memorial Service

Please join in celebration of Nancy Neal’s life with family, friends and coworkers at the:

Stanaker Neighborhood Library.
611 S/Sgt. Macario Garcia
Houston, TX 77011
832-393-2080

Date: 5/6/11

Time: 3-4 pm

This celebration at the library will be followed by funeral service

Date: 5/6/11
Time: 4-6 pm
Location: Felix H Morales Funeral Home: 2901 Canal Street, Houston, TX 77003
5 pm: Service by Father Henry from the Catholic church.

In lieu of flowers, Nancy's family is asking to please donate to the Houston Public Library Foundation, phone 832-393-1524, to benefit the Stanaker Neighborhood library, where Nancy worked.

Thanks,

Shammi

Tribute & Memorial Gifts of Books for HPL

Greetings - Here is a form that can be used for Tribute and Memorial Gifts of books for libraries.

Shammi

Big Kindle News

Greetings all,

Amazon released some pretty exciting news this morning. They are working with Overdrive to make Kindle books available through 11,000 libraries throughout the United States. See the link below for more information:

http://bit.ly/goN443

Very exciting!

mvc

HPL Policy relating to System Gifts ( Book Sale items)

Good afternoon,

As per Library Materials Services Procedures related to system gifts (Procedures 6.6 Section B Materials), please accept all donations. Please refer to the following Policy and Procedures on the intranet: https://hplnet.hpl.lib.tx.us/polandpro/pro-6_6.pdf. Accepting booksale is a gesture of goodwill and building relationships with the customers we serve.

· Please thank the customer for their generosity.

· Please offer the customer a Book Donation Slip, including donor’s complete name and address and description of materials. The original (white) copy is given to the donor. The second (yellow) copy is sent to the Gifts Section. The Library does not place a valuation on gift items. Only receipt of the item (s) is acknowledged. No itemization or inventory of gifts will be provided.

Please sort donations

· Select the “best” items for your booksale table or cart and send the rest to Friends.

· Rare or valuable items should be set aside and brought to the attention of Library Materials Services.

· Please remove items immediately that are mildewed and place in a plastic bag.

· Donated materials that are damaged, disfigured, ripped or have yellowed pages should be discarded upon point of receipt. Please box and label “Discards.”

Please do hesitate to contact your Team Leader if you have any questions or concerns. Thank you!

HPL Policy for Suspending Customers

Greetings,

I wanted to remind everyone that all staff needs to be very familiar with Policy 2.3 (see link below this paragraph) and ensure that we are all following it when suspending people from the library. This policy explicitly lays out the offenses that can result in suspensions and how long each suspension should be based on type of offense. When suspending someone from a location, we need to make certain that it is done according to this policy.

https://hplnet.hpl.lib.tx.us/polandpro/pol-2_3.pdf

I really want to draw everyone’s attention to section C. In fact, it is a good practice to print this out and share it with all staff. I also would like for everyone to post this information to your location’s blog. We have to make sure that the suspension we issue for rule violations matches the appropriate listed category (Short Term Suspension, Long Term Suspension, and Indefinite Suspension). In addition, it is crucial that the length of suspension follow the guidelines listed here based on whether it is a customer’s first, second, third (etc.) offense.

Finally, and I can’t stress this enough, anytime there is a suspension, there needs to be an incident report to document the details. In the reports, it is important to explicitly state why the customer was suspended and the duration of the suspension. I find it useful to include a reference to the phrasing in our policy that applies to the situation at hand.

Please let me or your team leader know if you have any questions at all about this.

Thanks,

Mike Van Campen

Fines for Friday, 02/04/11

Greetings all.

As you know, the Library was closed last Friday, 02/04/11. Unfortunately, the closed dates calendar in the Library’s computer system was not altered to reflect this additional closed day, and fines will assess for that day on items that became overdue on or before Friday, 02/04. Please keep this in mind as you work with your customers and waive any fines that accrue for Friday, 02/04/11. This affects only fines that accrue for the single day, 02/04.

Thanks for your assistance with this.

Fred Schumacher

Hold Pick Up Notification Problem Last Week

Greetings all.

This is to let you know that there was a technical problem that interfered with the delivery of telephone notices last week. Consequently, delivery of Hold Pick up and Overdue notices between 01/27 and 02/04 was delayed until Saturday, 02/05. Sadly, some of the notices went out too late for customers to get their items before they cleared from the hold shelves.

If you encounter a customer who was not able to get his/her hold because of this problem, please extend our sincere apologies for the lapse in service, assure him/her that the problem has been fixed and new quality assurance measures developed to prevent it occurring again, and help him/her to place a new hold on the needed title. Because of this problem, you may move customers who missed their opportunity to pick up their original holds before they expired to the top of the hold queue on titles for which they need replacement holds.

Thanks in advance for your assistance with this.

Fred Schumacher