A day at Main

The Main library is situated in Downtown Columbus, tomorrow we are going on a tour of the branch. We spent the day in admin getting to know everyone in a few of the departments. The CML staff offices are at the Operations Centre and Main Library.



We had a meet and greet in the morning with some of the staff who work in the offices at Main Library and met with our hosts.
First stop was a tour of Infoline (Information Line), this department is in charge of Rovers (staff rovers who go to branches when needed), Inter Library Loans and the call centre.

Rovers are full time staff who work at CML and are rostered on at the Main Library. If a branch has staff who are absent then the rovers are sent to the branch and rostered to help.

Inter Library Loans are done manually through the library. A form is filled out and then the staff there process the ILL from start to finish. Library members are able to place up to 4 holds a day.



InfoLine also has a Call Centre :) There is a central phone number and about 5 staff are rostered on to take calls for the library. The team is responsible for taking calls or transferring them to other branches.
Last months statistics

-21,319 calls in
-Average talk time is 1:58
-Average wait time is 17 seconds







There is also an E-mail reference service and IM (instant message) Service.

-Jan to July 3,835 emails

The IM service includes Yahoo messenger, msn, ICQ, Gtalk, AIM, text message service and a chat widget.

-7,421 IM sessions from Feb to July




Public Services Admin Department -We sat with the 4 managers and a Deputy Director who are responsible for various areas and branches. Their jobs are incredibly broad and in general terms each of them does the following-





Youth & Teens Public Services Administrator - Overseas the organisation of homework help centres, summer reads, Ready to read core program (new program)-workshops for parents, Teen Advisory board.

Main Library Public Services Administrator - In charge of managing the Circulations, Genealogy History & Travel, Science Business & News, Infoline & Rovers, Audio Visual, Humanities Fine arts & Recreation, Centre for Discovery.

Information and Collections Public Services Administrator -Overseeing the promotion of the collection, weeding guidelines, display, management and maintenance of the collection, floating collection.

Operations & Adult Learning Public Services Administrator - Job help Centres, General Programming guidelines, Homework help programs.

Next we went to the Finance Department.We met several staff who explained how the payroll is done for the 795 staff, how the accounts area works, budgeting and systems software maintenance. The Chief Fiscal manager spoke about their ecommerce solution and how to make workstations such as the self check, print release/pay and Library IT centres more efficient by providing a services such as paying, checking out and having library cards connected to these services.