Re: patrons placed REQUESTS - increased workload

["Diane M. Ranney" <dranney@xxxxxxxxxx>]

The Bourne Library (member of the CLAMS Network) had an enormous increase in holds after going live with Millennium.  We had previously had a DRA system that picked randomly from the list of libraries for holds, under the new Millennium, we found that because we are close to the top of an alphabetical list, we are being "hit" more often.  This hopefully will change when we go to Phase 2.2, but in the meantime, we adjusted our schedules for paging lists by assigning the person who has reference duty (we do not have a full time reference person--the 4 professional librarians split shifts for reference duties) to do a paging list every four hours.  We saw an increase of average 20-30 holds/day to over 100/day in the first weeks.  This has slowed a little, but we still see an average of 50-60 holds/day, double what we had.  We are unable to hire any new staff, but found that we could teach clerical staff to set items in transit and that alleviates some of the pressure to get materials out in delivery on time. 

 

The extra work is offset by the extraordinary results in good PR--our patrons are so thrilled when they get their materials sooner and some have expressed their happiness at the "extra" service in donations to the library.  I can't say that this will happen everywhere, but it has here!  We are also using the statistics to justify keeping an extra clerical person on the payroll (not inflated for sure!).  In times of tight budgets, every increased stat helps.

 

Hope this is helpful.

 

Diane

 

Diane M. Ranney

Assistant Director

Jonathan Bourne Public Library

19 Sandwich Road

Bourne MA 02532

508-759-0644, x 103

508-759-0647 (FAX)

dranney@xxxxxxxxxx

----- Original Message -----

From: Sue Ricedorf

To: innopac@xxxxxxxxxx

Cc: Computer Services Dept.

Sent: Thursday, January 09, 2003 11:21 AM

Subject: patrons placed REQUESTS - increased workload

Greetings:
The Chester County Library System plans to turn on patron placed REQUESTS for the first time on 2/1/03.
To date, staff are still placing holds for the public. We plan to do a "soft" start,  and not publicize the new feature until we have worked out any "kinks"
in the first few weeks.

One of our concerns is trying to plan for the anticipated increase in volume of work for staff (shelf-checking for the increase in volume of paging slip items, etc.) in the
seventeen libraries in the county which vary greatly in size. We also realize we will need a larger area for keeping the hold materials to be picked up by patrons.

We would appreciate any information you have on the increased workload you experienced after you first turned on patron placed REQUESTS.
(What was the percentage of increase in holds placed? How did it impact workload of staff?  Did you need to hire more staff?)

Thank you in advance for sharing your experience.
Sue Ricedorf 
Computer Services Department
Chester County Library
PH: 610-280-2661
email: sricedorf@xxxxxxxxxx


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