Suggestions and Comments

DATE: October 13, 2006
FROM: LIBADMN@georgiasouthern.EDU
SUBJECT: Staffing

I am a junior here at GSU, I tend to do most of my studying on the weekends. I am curious as to why on Saturdays there are so few people here, I can\'t always get the help I need or have to wait in a line, but on Sunday, there are 5-6 adults plus several student workers, I have even seen 2 student workers at on time. Sundays, leave the employees sitting around with nothing to do, because there is so many employees. It makes more sense to have more help on Sat, so students can get the help they need finding books or retrieving them from the new warehouse. I hate hearing \"we are understaffed today and it may be a while until some one can go to the warehouse.\" You advertise daily trips, so it should be daily trips!!!

The over kill on Sun is ridiculous, especially with sat being understaffed.

RESPONSE:

Hello! I am Fred Smith, the department head for Access Services, the department responsible for staffing the Circulation/Reserve Desk and supplying materials from the Warehouse on weekends. The Information Services Department also provides service over the weekend, but since you asked specifically about retrieving materials from the Warehouse, we assume you are mainly asking about Circulation/Reserve Desk staffing. You have asked a simple question but I am afraid I'm going to have to give you a complicated answer.

Generally speaking, Saturdays are our least busy day and Sundays our very busiest day. For many years we had student assistants working Saturdays too, but due to budget cuts, we now have only one student working from 5 to 10 on Saturdays. I agree that some Sundays it does appear that we have more people working than is necessary. However, often times several of those people work on unusual tasks which take them away from that desk. If someone is out sick or at lunch or supper we need the extra hands. If we could schedule student assistants based solely on demand, we might not assign them Sunday work on some weekends, but they prefer to have a set schedule for the entire semester whether it is a busy weekend or not. In one sense you might say that having more people than appears necessary is insurance against something like what happened to you when you were told we were too shorthanded to retrieve an item from the Warehouse.

Ordinarily we make at least one trip mid afternoon each day to the Warehouse. There was one Saturday this semester that we had a unique situation where we were already short handed when one of the remaining staff members became very sick and had to leave. That is the only time we would have had a difficult time making an afternoon trip. We regret the inconvenience.

Thank you for your very good question; we hope the response answers it. If you would like to discuss it further, please don't hesitate. We like patrons who take enough interest to ask about our policies and procedures!

Fred Smith
Department Head
Access Services Department

Ann Hamilton
Associate Dean of the Library and Associate University Librarian
Office of the Dean
(912) 681-5115

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