HOOPLA Holiday Special

From Marianne Lorio:

We are running a “holiday special” on Hoopla, double your monthly checkouts. The additional checkouts are available now through the end of January. For the rest of November customers will see 4 additional checkouts. So for example, I had already used my 4 checkouts for the month. Now that the additional checkouts have been added, I have four more checkouts to use by the end of the month. For December and January customers will have a total of 8 checkouts for each month. Please keep in mind that unused checkouts do not role over to the next month. There will be a banner announcing the special on the library homepage.

The biggest question you will be asked is if we plan on making this permanent. At this point we don’t know. Explain that we would like to increase the number of available checkouts, but the library has to pay per checkout. This is our way of seeing what impact increasing checkouts will have on the cost and to determine if we can accommodate additional checkouts in our budget. Please let me know if you have any questions.

PF

Reminder: RSVP for the HPL Holiday Celebration

Hello,

The HPL Holiday Celebration Team recently sent out another email regarding staff confirming their attendance to the holiday celebration next month:

To those staff interested in attending HPL's Staff Holiday Celebration, please check your email and respond to the invitation by close of business on Monday, December 1st, to confirm attendance for yourself and your guest (if you so choose to bring one). Please keep in mind that all guests must be 21 or over.

The holiday celebration will take place at the Julia Ideson Building (across from the Central Library in Downtown) on December 12th from 7pm-10pm. As a reminder, the event is semi-formal and everyone will be treated to an evening of dinner - including complimentary drinks - music, and prizes. Some prizes include various gift cards, TVs and tablets, symphony and ballet tickets, and much more!

Also, everyone will receive a gift, but you must be present to receive your gift.

MR

Floating Holiday

The deadline for requesting and getting this approved is the 1^st of December. As a reminder here is the policy:

Floating Holidays

1. New employees hired on or before June 30 of any given year shall be eligible

for one floating holiday in that calendar year.

2. Employees hired on or after July 1 of any given year shall not be eligible for a

floating holiday in that calendar year.

3. Floating holidays not taken during a calendar year do not accrue from year to

year and will be lost if not taken.

4. Floating holiday leave must be requested and approved 30 days in advance.

 

PF

Citywide Blackout of LMS

From Suzy Benton:

As you may be aware, the current Learning Management System (LMS) will be migrating to the Cloud very soon. The new system will be known as the Talent Management System (TMS) and will provide greater capabilities and smoother navigation.

The Go LIVE date is currently set for December 15^th.  Prior to rollout of the new system, there will be a planned citywide blackout of the LMS that affects ALL USERS between Dec. 3 and Dec. 15.  During this time, NO ACTIVITY will occur in either the old LMS or the new TMS! 

A city-wide all staff communication should be coming soon with more information regarding this blackout.

MR

Intranet Access

Team –

We are still experiencing some network related problems around the system. Wireless access is still spotty or not available at some locations. Central is experiencing internet access outage on the public computers. We have resolved issues with the staff access. Also, our intranet server crashed during the outage and we have moved it to a new address. Please use this new address to get to our intranet site https://hplnet.houstonlibrary.org. We will make sure we keep you updated on the outstanding outage issues.

Regards

Roosevelt Weeks

Deputy Director of Library Administration

Houston Public Library - We link people to the world

832-393-1327

Weather Alert: Freeze Warning

From John Middleton:

WEATHER ALERT 

FREEZE WARNING

13 November 2014

                                                                                                    

The National Weather Service is advising of the potential for winter weather starting tonight (11/13) at 9:00 PM through Friday (11/14) at 9:00 AM as a cold front continues to impact southeast Texas.  Forecasts call for the possibility of freezing temperatures in the northern areas of the region as early as 9:00 PM and the Houston Metro area around 1:00 AM. Temperatures should rise back above freezing by 9:00 AM on Friday.  At this time, the City of Houston has not issued any notices or closures for city facilities.

Temperatures will continue to fall throughout the weekend and into early next week. Employees should take steps to ensure they remain safe during this winter weather, including:

• Protecting people, pets, pipes and plants from freezing temperatures. More information is available online at houstontx.gov/emergency. 
• Avoid driving during periods of freezing rain – ice is more likely to form on overpasses and bridges, but can form anywhere a street surface falls below freezing.

As with any inclement weather conditions, please tune in to local news stations to get weather forecasts and road conditions.  For additional information on conditions or possible HPL closings, please contact the emergency hotline at 832-393-1550 or your immediate supervisor.

Thanks for your cooperation, please stay safe and warm.

MR

Evanced Display on the New Website

From HPL Print & Graphics on behalf of the Virtual Team:

Hello,

You may have noticed that programs entered into Evanced for December are not appearing on the website immediately. The Virtual Team provided the following explanation for programs not appearing on the website immediately:

The new website pulls information from Evanced in a different way than the old one did. The old website basically just showed the information from Evanced in a list form, and it showed up immediately after you published. The new website actually pulls in the data from Evanced and creates new, editable content on the website. This allows pages to be manipulated a little more than the pages on the old website (format the content, add images, share the event as a regular webpage, etc.), which means less duplication of information (and work). The website pulls content every 6 hours, and it only pulls in the next 30 days’ programs with each data import.

You do not need to change anything about your regular workflow. However, if there are changes to a program that need to be published immediately or if a program needs to be added last minute, please email hplvirtuallibrary@houstontx.gov or contact Somer Newland (3-1572) or Saima Kadir (3-1698). If a program does need to be added last minute, please do not enter it into Evanced – just let the Virtual Team know and they will add it on their end. If it’s entered in Evanced by you and then entered by the Virtual Team, once that information is pulled from Evanced, there will be duplicate entries on the website. If time is not an issue, you *can* make the change in Evanced, and the changes will be made the next time the website pulls information from Evanced.

If you have any questions, please contact the Virtual Team.  Thank you.