CE Managers
Meeting
10-23-15
Compiled by
Yolanda Anguiano
CE Update: (Michele Gorman) Michele congratulated
the new hires and promotions in the group. Edgar Fuentes is the new
Administrative Supervisor at Stella Link. Dena Melvin is the new Manager
of Park Place. The new Manager for Mancuso is Tula Gorden. We also
have new Youth Services Managers: Angela Barratt will serve in that capacity at
Collier and Jayla Parks will be at Alief. Jayla remains at Acres
Homes/Oak Forest temporarily. Two staff members are now serving as acting
Assistant Managers: Tega Zoma for Mancuso and Iona Joseph for Johnson.
The new assistant manager for Heights begins November 9th. We
will be looking at applications for Administrative Supervisors for Collier and
Alief shortly. HPL is participating in a hiring event for veterans on
November 6th from 9AM-2PM. Interviews will be done on the
spot.
Circulation
Administration is now under Digital Strategies instead of LMS. This was
done to unify both the HelpDesk and Circ Admin call centers.
The Fall
Festival is Friday, October 30th from 11AM-2PM. All
Neighborhood Libraries will open an hour later that day. Both Clayton and
Central will be business as usual. All locations are required to either
participate in the pumpkin decorating contest or have a booth at the
festival. Remote parking will be available. Staffs are encouraged
to wear their HPL red unless they are in costume.
Donations to the
CMC have surpassed $28,000 and we have 31% participation. Our goal is to
raise $50,000 and have 100% participation. Keep reminding your staff that
giving, even a little will go a long way to help another. Those who
donate will be entered into a raffle to earn prizes.
Councilmembers
have given $16,000 to Southwest Express/Walter for enhancements to their
space. Youth Services received $42,000 for After School Zones. They
will use the money to build STEAM kits.
Please remind
your staff to take the Health Assessment. We only have a 35% completion
rate. Reporting your biometric numbers will entitle you to a $600
discount on your insurance, and if your spouse participates, their biometric
numbers can earn you an additional $300 discount. See the email that was
sent out on 10/22 for more details on the remaining biometric screening
locations.
Digital
Strategies: (Rick
Peralez & Saima Kadir) Rick introduced Virtual Services Manager Saima
Kadir. Her team is responsible for our web presence. She pointed
out the different web pages accessible even when our main website is
down. Customers sometimes refer to the catalog page as our website, but
it’s different. The catalog is cloud based, so it works independently of
the main one. The main HPL website is www.houstonlibrary.org. Digital Strategies and Communications
govern the site, but Virtual Services and Branding Manager Donna Jackson
maintain it. Various HPL staffs are responsible for the content. Special
Collections websites are separate and are housed on WWW2 servers. Special
Collections’ staffs govern and maintain content. The web pages are updated by
Roland Lemonius and George Eggleston. Roland is also responsible for
maintaining the intranet. That web page is also separate and housed on
the WWW2 server. When the main website is down, you can also urge
customers to use our mobile app. It offers much of the same information:
catalog access, My Account, digital media, locations, events, digital archives
and book lists. More detail on the HPL webpages can be found in Saima’s
presentation which will be posted with the notes.
Digital
Strategies is continuing to monitor why the servers have gone down and is
working with HITS for a solution. Our main website may be down today, so
they can troubleshoot the problem. The slowness experienced with Sirsi is
being addressed by HITS and Digital Strategies, but it’s more difficult to
pin-point the problem. If you don’t see your daily or weekly reports in
Sirsi, contact the Helpdesk. Rick is trying to meet with Coin Copiers to address
our concerns. The problems with Tech Logic have been communicated to the
company and they have promised to “make it right” and give an alternate
proposal different than retro-fitting our equipment for the price of a new
one. Recently there was a sweep of the entire system to clean up the
wiring in the libraries. Rick has also made the reservation system a top
priority to provide better customer service. Connecting existing staff
phone lines to the 911 service is also being addressed. The team is
working on an inventory initiative, so they ask if you have old IT equipment
not being used to send the list of items and G numbers to Celeste Diaz by COB
11/6. They will work with SPACES on getting them removed from your
location.
Rick spoke about
the inclusion of Circ Admin into the Digital Strategies department. He
said it should be a smooth transition and will provide more access to the call
center. The manual paper process will become more automated. The
computer cards process will also be improved.
Clayton: (Sue Kaufman) The PBS program “The
Genealogy Roadshow” will be taping a program at JIB on November 22nd
and anyone can attend. The taping will be from 8:30AM-6PM. There
will be limited parking. You can find more information on Clayton’s blog.
HMRC: (Laney McAdow) Beginning next week,
there will be a cell phone tour of HMRC available. There will be 19 stops
inside and outside the building. You can either go to the website: http://hmrc.toursphere.com, or call 832-308-3574 to
participate. There will be an author event on November 14th
that HMRC is co-sponsoring at the Julia Ideson Building. Authors will be
speaking in the Reading Room and exhibitors will be in the Norma Meldrum
room. The authors all write material about Houston and Texas.
LMS: (Fred Schumacher) We will have a
new eBook service called Axis 360. It complements our current eBook
service, but doesn’t replace any other service. There will be a soft
launch at the end of this month with a full launch expected for early
November. Training webinars will be offered on 10/29 at 9:15AM and
11:15AM and 10/30 at 9AM. The 10/30 session will be archived for those
who couldn’t attend. Sessions will last 45-60 minutes. Register using the
Training Calendar.
International
Services: (Shammi
Gill) Citizenship Month is in November. If you are doing a special
program not part of Youth Services, please send Tiffany Wise an email, so she
can add you to our collateral. Language Access 101 Training is happening
on Friday, November 6th from 11AM to Noon at 611 Walker in the
Garden Auditorium. This is recommended for front-line staff because it
will help them understand the City’s Language Access Program. One hour of
training credit will be earned. A basic Spanish class was conducted this
month with Beatriz DeAngulo as instructor. More classes will be
forthcoming. Shammi is looking for staff willing to be part of the
International Services Advisory Team. She asks that managers encourage
their staff to join. See Shammi’s email on 10/22.
CE Admin: WPRs in Talent Management System (TMS)
are due by the 31st. Complete the WPR form that was used
previously. You can then place the narrative in TMS, in the section that pops
up when you click “meeting” in the staff account. Laurie will email
follow up instructions. In TMS, you can add feedback to staffs’ SMART
goals to track progress, but don’t change the status or it will
disappear.
Grey Metal
Stands: SPACES needs to
borrow your grey metal stands. Please label your stand clearly, so it’s
easily identified upon return. JIB will be using them for an exhibit.
Directory: Celeste and Yolanda are working
on a picture directory of all Assistant Managers and Managers in Customer
Experience. If they have requested a picture from you, please comply.
Liz: We were told that all staff plans
are to be placed in TMS. Scoring will not be available in TMS until at
least January. Any 5th month, 11th month, or
promotional review due before January needs to be done in the old system (HEAR
Interim Application). It is unavailable at this time. You will be
notified when it’s back up. The HEAR Interim Application is back up as
of Thursday, 10/29/2015. The plans in TMS don’t have an auto sign
feature, so several plans are still in pending status. Please follow up
with your staff and reviewing authority to ensure they have been signed.
911 Service: To use the 911 service on a staff phone,
you will need to dial “9” first to get an outside line. To set up a test
call with the 911 service, you have two options. Option one is emailing testcalls@911.org and put “test call” as the
subject. Include your location’s phone numbers, address, state & time
that you want to set up a test call for 911 in the message. Their slowest
traffic is Monday to Thursday from 9AM-2PM, so provide times to make the test
calls within this window. They will email you the assigned time to test
your phone. The second option is to call them at 832-237-1911. They
will need the same information as in the email; however, some staff will not
take your information over the phone and ask you to send them an email
instead. Consequently, your best option is the first one. When you
make the test call, read the email received from 911, ask what phone number and
address are showing up on their system to make sure they are correct. In
addition, the 311 service doesn’t work on our phones, but you can call
713-837-0311 to access it.
Policy: 2 minor policy revisions were done this
month and an email was sent to all staff on the 19th. AP 2-3
for severe weather clarifies the language indicating that staff must abide by
the instructions given to each Emergency Tier. Please review it with your
staff and if you have questions, address it with your Senior Manager. The
Email Business Cycle policy change AP 8-10, explains that all email is subject
to the Open Records Act and email will be archived for 2 years.
Youth
Services: Kallie sent an
email out describing the new format of the Youth Services Meeting. Youth
Services includes all youth, birth to age 18. The meetings now include a
training element that staff members receive 1 hour of training credit and they
break into groups to talk about the various specializations within Youth
Services. This is an opportunity for staff to network and learn from
their peers as well as share some of the fabulous things that they are
doing. The Teams include: After School Zone, Early Literacy, School
Relations, Marketing, Very Ready Reading Program (VRRP), Children’s Book
Celebration, Summer Reading Program, and Teen Special Programs. It is
very important for staff that serve young people (young children, tweens, and
teens) to attend the meetings. Please work to get schedules in order to
accommodate this. We understand that not all youth services staff can
attend each meeting, but try to allow as many staff members as possible to
attend. Look to Kallie’s email dated 10/22 for more information on their
work.
We are going to
participate in the Houston Mini Maker Faire on Nov 14th from 9PM-6PM
at the George R. Brown Convention Center. Kallie still needs 12 volunteers to
help cover our booth. Michele said we need to work with this community
and our partnership with them is important for the future of HPL. Please
encourage your staff to volunteer.
GSD Security: (Frederick Lee) We were
introduced to our new Senior Public Loss Investigator Zachary McMahon.
His phone number is 832-393-8486. We also have a new Senior Project Manager
who is over Central, Armondo Bell. He offices next to Central’s Security
Office on the loading dock.
Café College: (Cylenthia Hoyrd) Councilman Ed
Gonzalez has asked HPL to bring the Café College model from San Antonio to
Houston. It is a college access center created in partnership with the
City. It targets kids K-12 but it’s especially for juniors and seniors in
high school. They help students get accepted to higher education, whether
it is a traditional college or technical/vocational one. The Café College
will be housed at Carnegie and they are actively looking for grant money.
They open on December 5th and hope to provide a VIP tour of the
facility in November. Project Grad will have two advisors on
location. The hope is to push out the model to other locations in the
future.
Quality
Management System:
(Michele) We are still looking for authors to work on the Quality Management
System (QMS). There are still many
processes that need authors, editors, and experts to review them. Michele
wants you to examine the list and think of whom on your team would be good to
get involved. She went over the FAQ sheet regarding the QMS and asked
that each manager do the same with their staff. Present this as an
opportunity to help with communication and consistency. Managers asked if
we could include visual aids like screen shots or flow charts to the
descriptions of the processes. Michele said that someone would need to
take the lead on keeping those items current. Another suggestion was to
have date stamps on each document to track revisions. To become part of
the QMS team, you can send your Gmail address or create a special google
account and send it to Laurie. She is the project leader. Once the
QMS is done, you can use it as a tool to supplement new hire training.
Discussion: We split into teams and were
tasked with finding solutions to different problems that exist in HPL.
Subjects included Teamwork, Communication, Morale, Time, Customer Service,
Facilities, and Consistency. Each team was to come up with three
solutions and name one thing that is already being done to address it.
Administration wanted to express that all staff should be problem solvers and
it doesn’t fall to just one person to make things right.
In attendance: LeRoy Robinson, Chris Arrowood, Melissa
Hayes, Tula Gorden, Richard Hurst, Brandon Pope, Leonore Hu, Jennifer Myers,
Monica Siboldi, Tim Siegel, Shirley Singletary, Tara Hornbeak, Tony Goodwyn,
Mercedes Mayne, Janna Hoglund, Donnie Byrd, Melissa Gwinn, Angela Barratt,
Cylenthia Hoyrd, Fred Schumacher, Craig Bertuglia, Lauren Wilcox, Paty
Bustamante, Jayla Parks, Jose Santoyo, Erica Cardoso, Christy Chang, Vanessa
Gempis, Billy Glasco, Derrick Spearman, Jennifer Sessa, Virginia Williams,
Esther Reyes, Sylvia Espinosa, Tega Zoma, Laney McAdow, Karen Luik, Dena
Melvin, Patricia Ogea, Gary Lackey, Michelle King, John Merullo, Hellena
Stokes, Nathan Stokes, Maurina Powers, Sue Kaufman, Edgar Fuentes, Kelly
Patton, Diane Doyen, Dominick Spinelli, Christopher Patrick, Alma Avina;
Guests: Rick Peralez, Saima Kadir, Frederick Lee & Zachary McMahon; CE
Admin: Michele Gorman, Elizabeth Sargent, Laurie Covington, Patrick Atkins,
Pedro Fonseca, Celeste Diaz, & Yolanda Anguiano
Next CE
Managers Meeting is on November 20 at 8:30AM in Central’s Concourse Meeting
Room.
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