Evening Procedures Prior to Closing

These are all tasks that should be done at least once per shift, some time during the evening shift. All can be done before formal desk closing procedures start

Securing the Building

  • At least once per shift in the late afternoon or evening, make sure emergency exit doors at the corner stairwells are latched and alarms are on; otherwise the building is not secured.

    Do this by pressing on the door, not the breaker bar (pressing the breaker bar will set off the alarm), and verifying that each door’s breaker bar light is blinking red slowly. You must check each of the eight doors.

    If a door is not latched, pull it shut. If a door’s alarm isn’t as expected—that is, if a light is off, if it’s on but solid red, or if it’s quickly flashing red, or if you hear a door’s lock shutting off and on at regular intervals—reset it using the Alarm key in the key box.
  • Check the class schedules for each weekday evening. After 9:00PM, most classes have ended. If classrooms are not in use, check to be sure the projectors are off, then pull the doors shut.

Services

  • Check Exterior Book Drop (next to the Staff Entrance/Exit)
  • Check public printers on Floors 1, 2, and 4.
    • Check each printer’s screen for any problems, particularly ⚠️ or a flashing red LED, which may indicate the following:
      • Clear any jams. These may be just above the paper trays or anywhere in the paper’s path.
      • Clear any jobs in memory that formatted to non-letter-sized paper (e.g., legal, A4, etc.). They won’t print and will prevent other jobs from being printed by that printed until they are cleared.
    • Paper trays should be between ¾ full and full.
      • Be careful not to overfill as this will cause some printers jam.
      • Paper is on the second floor but not the 4th floor.
    • Check toner/ink level; when it is at or below 25%, check the Stack 7 Supplies Room shelves to see if there is a replacement cartridge ready. If not, make sure Kimberly is aware in time to order replacement cartridges (and when you take a box of paper or new cartridge from Stack 7 supplies room, remember to notify Kimberly)
    • Write down any error messages or codes on the display panels for issues you cannot address, and notify Kimberly, who will contact IT.
  • Check staplers near Circulation and refill if necessary
  • Straighten 1st floor furniture

Recording and Reporting Usage

  • Remember to train student workers to record questions they get in LibGuides
  • Record microfilm/fiche/card use and then refile materials returned to the top of the cabinet in Stack 1. Try to do this after the genealogy people have left for the day, usually by around 9:00PM weeknights.
  • Update gate count and patron count data spreadsheet (Kim will provide further details on this)

Desk Operations

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How to Add a Printer

An old PC has just been replaced by a newer one, and/or you’ve logged into a PC that you’ve never used before using your CCSU credentials. Now you need to print something and…there’s that useless Fax printer again! Where’s 1347?

The easiest way I stumbled across to add a printer is to open a web browser and hit <Ctrl P> or File | Print. This opens the print dialog box and presents the page to print as a pdf:

Click on the “Print using the system dialog…

As of May 2022, this gives you access to the selection tool which allows you to search and sort printers, unlike the clunkier Windows 10 UI that forces you to scroll through every blessed printer on campus.

When the dialog box opens up, click Find Printer…:

You’ll get the full list of printers on campus, except you can search and sort:

You’re probably looking for printers in EB, so you can enter. You could also sort by location and then scroll down to EB:

You can then scroll through the list, but if you’re at the Circ Desk, you can already see the printer you’re most likely to need, 1458. If that’s not the printer you need, scroll down the list until you find the one you’re looking for:

Assuming you want to add 1458, go ahead and click on 1458 and then click OK.

Two other notes:
1. There are other ways to find and add printers, this is only one of the easier ways
2. This is a per-account, per-PC setting. That means every account on this PC that needs the printer (remember student worker accounts) will need to log in on this PC to add this printer. Also, even though you add the printer to one PC you work one using your own CCSU Blue Net credentials, if you work on other PCs, you’ll need to add this there as well. I guarantee you’ll remember this the first time you try to print something.

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How to enable Quick Print in Alma

For most of my time at Burritt, we’ve been printing item requests, aka “Resource Request Slip Letters”, using PrinterOn. And when we have done this, items print only to PRN-001347 in Room 104.

However, when we were teleworking during the COVID-19 pandemic, printing to a printer as much as 100 miles from where we actually were wasn’t an option. And since December 2021 PrinterOn hasn’t been working for us. The workaround is

  1. Enable Quick Print in your Alma account,
  2. Add the printer(s) you need to your CCSU Windows account, on each PC you use.

To enable Quick Print, log into your Alma account. Typically you already are logged in, are trying to print something, and by the time you’re reading this you’ve finished swearing at Alma for the moment and just need to get back to work.

In the upper right corner, click the Choose Location icon:

This side menu will pop out (Please note this screen shot was taken in May 2022; exact behavior & appearance may change over time):

Check the “Enable quick printing” box, and then click the drop-down printer item to select PRN-001347 instead of Access Services Print Queue:

You can now close the Location box by clicking on the upper right X. Your changes will save automatically.

Now when you print a request, you’ll go through the same steps as you previously did–in the example of printing request slips, you select the items to print, and then click Print Slips–except, instead of printing the slips, the browser opens a PDF viewer and you print from its dialog box.

If you’re stuck at the Circulation Desk, you may wish to print to another printer such as PRN-001458. If that is the case, see How to Add a Printer to Your CCSU Windows Account.

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Cancelling a Recall and Placing a Consortial Request

A student brought a book back that she still needed, but had been recalled by another student. Rather than accept the return in this scenario, if there are other copies of the book in the CSCU Consortium, you can cancel the recall request and replace it with a consortial request for the second person who needs it. You’ll need the ID number of the person who placed the recall and the book title. Here’s how:

In Alma, do an ALL TITLE search for the book in the NETWORK Zone, find the record that has multiple holdings (including CCSU’s), and create a request for the second requester (the person who recalled the item). Once that is sent, cancel the first request and in this case, do NOT notify the requester. They won’t care where the item comes from, when all is said and done.

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Returning Course Reserves to FACULTY members

Faculty frequently come in and ask to take their personally owned copies off Course Reserves. If one asks you to do this while you are at the desk, Jaime needs to be told about it so that he can edit the course record and reading list in ALMA.

If Jaime is in, have him come out to the desk.

If he is busy, record all of the barcode numbers and give it to him, telling him who the faculty member is and what course it is for.

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Overdue materials – Spring 2021 – COVID

We haven’t billed for any lost material since last March. The last due date Jaime billed students for was December 9, 2019. As the pandemic has warn on, I have renewed almost all of the material that was due prior to January 1, 2021 to allow our students/guests time to be able to come back on campus. This includes any materials that I missed earlier in 2020.

I am doing this with bulk due date changes. As of today: I have only gotten the Undergraduates done because they had the most materials out on loan. I hope to get the Continuing Ed students, then the Graduate students done.

The due date for everything will be APRIL 2, 2021. In an email to the students, I told them IF the materials are returned before April 2, there will be no overdue fines. After April 2, the overdue fines will start accruing again. On June 1, we will be running the bill for replacements for materials that have been returned and their Banner accounts will be billed accordingly.

Consortia students/faculty: Those I have actually run yesterday. I have contacted all of my counterparts at the other institutions and they are contacting their patrons. I have put Fulfillment notes in the book record so that when we check them in, you will know I am looking for them. Just leave them on my desk with a note.

Guests are a problem. Guests who have overdue books from last spring have expired accounts. I still haven’t decided whether I should just leave them alone and bill them, or if I should renew them, accounts, and books.

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Expiring Guest Borrowers during the COVID-19 pandemic, Fall 2020 – ?

As we offer limited services during the COVID-19 pandemic, guest borrowers will be treated somewhat differently than normal.

Guest borrowers with existing accounts can renew by contacting us by phone and verifying mailing address, phone number, and email address are current (or providing updated contact information). Often this happens when they call to see if they can renew items they have out or are wondering if we are open to take returns.

Assuming all is well with the existing account and the borrower owes no fines, we will then update the expiring account’s expiration date one year out, create a new borrower card with new barcode, renew items they have checked out, and mail the new card to them.

Because new guest borrower accounts cannot be created touchlessly, we are unfortunately not adding new guest borrowers at this time.

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COVID/Social Distancing violation form

Thank you, Nico for creating a form for us to use to record any violations that we see in the library. We are going to be doing this for a week or two to get an idea of how many times we have to tell someone to social distance, put on their masks etc. This is the link: https://forms.gle/3SzoCga9aisrCtm5A Enter each instance separately.


I will put it on the iPad tomorrow and you can also find it in the links to the right on this blog under CCSU Burritt Covid form.

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COVID Phone Numbers

Hotline for COVID Information Line and Resource Navigator:
(860) 832-3200

COVID Student Contact Center:
(860) 832-1910

“All-Incidents” Employee Call Center
(860) 832-3202

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Returning RENTED books to CCSU bookstore (COVID-19)

Students create a return and ship the book back through UPS:

https://central-ct.bncollege.com/shop/central-ct/page/rental-book-return

Rentals FAQ:
https://central-ct.bncollege.com/shop/central-ct/page/rental-faqs

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