Reporting Gang Activity

Greetings all,

Please review this important information from the City's Security Management Division about reporting suspected gang activity:
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The URL below will take you to the Stop Houston Gangs webpage that will allow you (or your staff) to report gang activity. There is a place on the page which allows photos to be attached. For the purposes of this webpage, it is probably best to have the location manager fill out the report if at all possible.

http://stophoustongangs.org/default.aspx?menuitemid=489

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Please let me or you Team Leader (or Coordinator) know if you have any questions.

Thanks,
Mike VC

Gaming Procedures

Greetings all,

As many of you continue to roll out gaming at your location again, I wanted to re-send (post) the e-mail I sent out with information on the newly adopted procedures. Also, please note that the gaming procedures documents and forms are available on the "Resources" page of this blog in the right hand column.

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We are excited to announce the resumption of gaming at Houston Public Library. Those locations that circulate equipment and games to customers may begin to do so again at this time; please continue to follow existing procedures for this. For those locations that use gaming equipment in programs and/or Afterschool Zones, we are asking that you implement some new processes to ensure that the equipment is secure.

Below is a list of documents and forms now available on the NL blog:

• Gaming Program Procedure
• A sample of the new Gaming Program Log
• Gaming Inventory Control Procedure
• Gaming Equipment Distribution Receipt

Gaming Program Procedure

Please take a moment to thoroughly review these new procedures. We ask that these steps be followed at all locations when using any gaming equipment for a program.

Gaming Program Log

You will see that the Gaming Program Procedures refer to a “Gaming Program Log”. The log will be used every time a program is held to sign equipment out and confirm that it has all been returned. These logs have been created for each location by Sandy Farmer and will reflect the information that was shared when all locations were requested to inventory games and gaming equipment. These logs are available on the G Drive under the folder labeled “Gaming Program Logs”. If the information on these forms needs to be adjusted, please contact Sandy Farmer.

Gaming Inventory Control Procedure
This document covers what will be done in terms of ordering, distributing, and discarding damaged equipment. You will see that all equipment will need to be picked up by a manger or designee from Central to be delivered to your location. At both steps in this process, signatures will be required to document acceptance and delivery of items. In that vein, I have also included a copy of the “Gaming Equipment Distribution Receipt”, which is the document that needs to filled out when this happens.

In addition, it is important to note that the Inventory Control Procedures indicate that all damaged, broken, or obsolete items need to be sent to the Programming Department to be properly discarded.

All of the mentioned documents and forms are also available on the G drive in the folder labelled "Gaming" and have been added to the Neighborhood Libraries blog.

If you have any questions about this information, please do not hesitate to ask.

Thanks and Happy Gaming,

Mike VC

Fax Service Pilot at Scenic Woods and Central

HPL is piloting a fax service at two locations: Scenic Woods and Central Library. This service is being offered in conjunction with the other service (printing and copying) we receive through Coin Copiers.

Here is a very brief breakdown of the service:

• Fax service is available through the copier at Scenic Woods
• The fee is $1 per page faxed (including toll free numbers).
• Cash, coins, or print cards can be used to pay the fee.
• Only local and 800 numbers can be used on the fax machine.
• This service is only for sending faxes; there is no option to receive faxes.

The pilot is slated to run for six month, which puts it wrapping up around the end of March. At that time, there will be an assessment done to see if this service needs to be implemented at other locations. Please feel free to consult with Maurina at SCE on how this project is working and to share your comments/recommendations for this service moving forward.

Thanks,

Mike VC

Training Resource

Greetings all,

I wanted to share with everyone in Neighborhood Libraries a truly impressive resource that has been created and maintained by staff members (past and present) from the Central Library Support Team (CLST). It is a blog dedicated to providing training materials on an extremely wide range of topics useful for staff at all levels. The trainings cover everything from the basics of circulation to information on e-books. I encourage everyone to take a look at it and get to know it as a useful resource for training needs and information. IT is located at:

http://clsthelp.blogspot.com/

There is a team working on creating a similar training resource on the Intranet. That is being finalized. However, much of the content for that project is already available via the above-mentioned blog. The work that has been done on this is truly impressive and provides an amazingly broad range of trainings that are really useful to public services staff throughout the system.

We added this link to the Neighborhood Libraries blog as well. It is a link labeled “Training Resources” and is located on the right hand side of the page under the “HPL Links” heading.

I hope that this is useful and apologize for not sharing this resource sooner.

Thanks,

Mike Van Campen

Upcoming Location Closures

Greetings all,

I wanted to share information about facilities closures that are coming in the next few months. The information below is taken from the Planning and Facilities Department page on HPL’s Intranet (https://hplnet.hpl.lib.tx.us/depts-plan.html), which is updated any time there is new information:

Fiscal Year 2011 Public Closings and Openings
Note: These dates are based on the latest information provided by the General Services Department on construction completion dates. Last updated 09/22/11

August 26, 2011 – Looscan closes for up to 120 days

October 24, 2011 – Alief closes for 3 days

October 27, 2011 - Alief reopens

November 04, 2011 close of business – Carnegie closes for 2 weeks

November 9, November 13 & November 17 – JIB Donor Events

November 21, 2011– Carnegie reopens

December 2, 2011 close of business – Robinson-Westchase closes for 1 week

December 5, 2011 – JIB reopens

December 12, 2011 close of business – Robinson-Westchase reopens

January 9, 2012 close of business - Collier closes for 120 days

Moving forward, the NL Administration office will send out e-mails to all staff with notification that this information has been updated.

Please let me know if you have any questions/comments about this.

Thanks and have a great day,

Mike Van Campen

Staff Feedback Discussions

Greetings all,

As has been shared, I will be conducting weekly staff meetings at rotating locations every Monday morning from 10 am to noon. These meetings are open to anyone who wishes to attend. They are not based on agenda and our intended to be open and informal discussions. I want to encourage folks to come to these meetings and ask questions, provide input, share ideas, etc. As I indicated in a previous message, I want to get feedback and input from staff on how NL Administration can help you to provide customers the services they need and make your job more enjoyable. But, I don't want to limit it to that, I really want these meetings to be your meetings. Below is a schedule for the upcoming meetings:

• Kendall Oct 10 10AM-12PM 1^st Floor Meeting Room
• Carnegie Oct 17 10AM-12PM Carnegie Annex Meeting Room
• Mancuso Oct 24 10AM-12PM Meeting Room
• Alief Oct 31 10AM-12PM Meeting Room
• Scenic Woods Nov 7 10AM-12PM Meeting Room

We will be sending out a reminder to all staff as each meeting approaches. I will be holding these meetings on an ongoing basis so that I can continue to get feedback from staff. So, not only is everyone welcome and encouraged to attend, you are perfectly welcome to attend multiple meetings as your schedule allows.

I look forward to meeting with all of you.

Thanks,

Mike Van Campen

Chief of Neighborhood Libraries

Big(ger) Kindle News

Greetings all,

Really big news just came out that will undoubtedly impact libraries significantly.

Amazon announced today that they will be releasing a whole series of new Kindles. There will be a Kindle Fire tablet that will compete with iPad for $199. There will be three new e-Ink readers: 1) a Kindle non-touch version for $79; 2) Kindle Touch version for $99; and 3) Kindle Touch 3G for $149.

Here is some early information on this: http://is.gd/Hj3AnU

I assume there will be a lot more information out there on this shortly.

Given that we now have Kindle content via Overdrive (and it is very easy to use), this will mean a huge increase in customers asking questions about and wanting e-books. As such, I will be adding a 15-20 minute demonstration of accessing Kindle books via Overdrive at all of my Monday morning meetings with staff. Stay tuned for more information and locations of those meetings.

In the meantime, take a quick look at the basic information page at Overdrive:

http://is.gd/sGcb3d

Even if you do not have access to a Kindle, you can go through the process and send the book to the Kindle Cloud Reader, which is a web app that allows you to read Kindle books instantly online. It does require an Amazon.com account but does not require that it be attached to any form of payment.

Please let me know if you have any questions about this.

Thanks,

Mike VC