AHSL on Facebook

The Web Committee (Jennifer Martin, Brooke Billman, Lindsey Greene and Joan Schlimgen) decided it was high time for AHSL-Tucson to join AHSL-Phx on Facebook after Jennifer shared results from a survey that the College of Pharmacy did with their undergraduate students in November 2008 about their use of social media. Here are some highlights showing what these students use:

• Facebook 75%
• MySpace 30%
• Read blogs 14%
• Write blogs 6%
• Almost no use of Twitter
• No use of RSS feeds, Delicious, Digg
• When limited to the younger students, results showed even greater use of social networking sites.

It's clear that an increasing number of our students are using Facebook as their primary communications tool and that having a presence there will enable the library to more effectively serve them. When we post announcements on the AHSL website, we will also put them on our Facebook page. We are also hoping to create an application that will enable users to search the library catalog from within their Facebook account. There are lots of options. So become a fan of the Arizona Health Sciences Library and encourage faculty and students to do the same!

Arrest

On Wednesday a man suspected in the theft of books from the AHSL as well as both campus bookstores was arrested here in the library. Thanks to help from security staff from the main campus bookstore, the man, who had been seen several times on our security camera system, and an accomplice were taken into custody. The man was booked into the Pima County jail and had several outstanding warrants for his arrest. Our camera system alerted us to the fact that this man had repeatedly exited through the 1st floor fire doors. We can’t say that this will end our book theft problem, but we’re relieved that this particular threat has passed.

Pandemic preparations

Last week I attended two meetings regarding campus planning for a possible pandemic. On Friday afternoon the Administrative Team met to talk about reasonable plans. Given the current situation we drafted a plan for “significant absenteeism” among library staff. We don’t feel that a total closure of the library is likely, but we want to be ready in case large numbers of staff members (or members of their families) are ill and unable to come to work. We have also talked about a total closure and have identified a strategy to handle this situation.
We will be creating signs for the offices of library liaisons in the Colleges listing who to call if the liaison is out. We will also create signs for the library entrance in the event that we are closed.
We will encourage everyone who has a need to use VPN in order to work from home, to test out the software. We will work with you if you have problems.
We will be talking to the College of Medicine Information Technology Services (ITS) to 1) get an emergency phone number, 2) stress the importance to the library (and campus and UMC) of keeping library servers and network service up and running and 3) stress the importance to hospitals and clinics around the state of keeping the AZHIN server up and running.
We are revising our phone tree and creating quick lists of staff phone numbers for ATeam members.
We have created a new reporting procedure for ATeam members to track the number of absentees in each department so staff can substitute in other departments if needed.
Obviously we hope that none of these procedures is necessary!

Continuing Education Opportunities

A reminder that the University offers a variety of opportunities for professional development: the Professional Success Institute, the University Leadership Institute, the Successful Supervisor Series, Career Success Strategies Workshops and other general HR courses are all available to UA employees. You can get more information at:
http://www.hr.arizona.edu/08_o/development3/