Contact with City Hall

From Deputy Director of Customer Experience Michele Gorman:

Hi everyone. This is just a reminder that ALL communication with Mayor Turner, the Mayor's Office, any City Council member and/or any City Council member's office regarding HPL must go through HPL's Government Liaison, Mary Sloan Hammond, or Dr. Lawson, without exception.

If you have any questions please let me know.

MR

ALERT: Suspicious Emails

From David LaPlante in HITS:

We are receiving reports daily of suspicious emails and attachments with various subjects. Some of the current emails appear to come from email addresses in the UK and contain a Microsoft Word attachment with potentially malicious code (Macros) that have the ability to run commands and infect systems.

As always, do not open, forward or respond to emails that appear to be suspicious, especially when the sender is not recognized. If you would like to report a suspicious email. Please contact the Help Desk either by telephone or email and provide the information from the Subject line. 

Thank you to those who have already reported suspicious emails this morning. You are all helping to keep our City systems more secure.

MR

RFID Tagging Work Group for Park Place NL

Hello,

Fred Schumacher in LMS is looking for a few staffers to be a part of the Park Place NL RFID Tagging Work Group. This team will be retrofitting the Park Place collection with RFID technology in order to improve the speed and efficiency of circulation services. Below is a brief description of the work group:

Team Name: RFID Tagging Work Group (Park Place NL)
Team Type: Work Group
Division: Customer Experience/LMS
Number of Team Members: 8-15

Team Charge: 
1. Correctly affix and accurately program RFID tags to library materials in a specific library collection.
2. Scan, stamp and box severely damaged items for discard.
3. Complete inventory for a specific library collection.

Team Goals:
1. Successfully RFID tag the complete collection of a specific library collection.
2. Bolster customer service through the use of shelf check machines which require items to be RFID tagged to function properly.
3. Weed and properly discard any severely damaged items from a specific library collection.

Team Term: February 8, 2016 - February 15, 2016
Meeting Frequency: At least a 4 day commitment at Park Place NL
Meeting Length: Mon-Fri, 6:00am - 3:00pm
Team Meeting Format: In person
Member Roll-off Dates: February 15, 2016

If you are interested, please let me and/or Jose know so that we can look at coverage for the dates you will be needed for this project. Please be mindful of the time and physical commitments required of this work group prior to committing to this project.

The application is here, and submissions should be entered by end of business on Wednesday, January 27th.

Group members will be selected and notified by end of business on Friday, January 29th.

This is not a one-time opportunity. Though there are a limited number of positions available, there will be more work groups for RFID tagging made in the future, and they will be looking for new team members for those groups as well.

Thanks,

MR

Volunteers Needed to be Studio Audience for Great Day Houston on January 28th

Hello,

Jennifer Schwartz from Programming is asking for volunteers to appear in the studio audience for a taping Houston Public Library will be doing on Great Day Houston. The taping will take place on Thursday, January 28th, and is for a feature on hosted author Wil Haygood, who will be a part of the HPLQ series in February in celebration of African American History Month. They need 20 HPL staffers to be a part of this event.

The group will need to be at KHOU studio by 8AM at 1945 Allen Parkway, Houston, TX 77019. The requirement is for staff to wear their HPL Red shirts and be an engaged and interested audience member. Speaking is not required.

If you are interested, please let me or Jose know so that we can look at coverage on that day for the grouping.

Thank you,

MR

UPDATE: Open Carry Law

Hello,

CitizensNet, the City of Houston Newsletter, just sent an email containing a FAQ handout regarding both new and old information about the open carry law that went into effect this year. Please see below for a link to the attachment:

COH: Open Carry - Frequently Asked Questions

This information has been added as a link under the "Staff Resources" section of the group blog.

Previous information about Open Carry can be found at this link: The New Open Carry Law.

If you have any questions at all, please do not hesitate to ask. Remember that you are responsible for knowing this information, especially since it was sent out to all COH employees.

Sincerely,

MR

Hoopla Accounts & Library Cards

From Marianne Lorio:

Hello:

This e-mail is just to clarify an issue that was brought up by a patron recently.

If you have both a Harris County Public Library card and a Houston Public Library card it is possible to checkout items from using both libraries' Hoopla accounts. This will allow you to have both the checkouts available as a Harris County patron and as a Houston Library patron. To do this you need to create two Hoopla accounts, one under each library card number. The trick is that you have to use two different e-mails to create the accounts. Otherwise Hoopla will automatically assume you are merely updating your library card information, not create two separate accounts. The process is not difficult you just need two separate e-mails. Let me know if you have any questions.

MR

Court Ordered Volunteers

Hello,

This is just a reminder that HPL does not accept, recognize, or honor court-ordered volunteer service.

List of organizations that we can refer customers to can be found at this link: Court Ordered Volunteer Service Locations

I've also added a link to the list on the main page of the blog under Volunteer Resources.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Thank you,

MR