Library Service Overview Updates

Library IT began an initiative last year in 2016 to implement a standard set of documentation for library services establishing expectations and documenting the resources required to provide ongoing operational support. Borrowing elements from service-level agreements, these overviews are internal agreements between the service owner and the library units that support the service, all of whom have an interest in service success and sustainability. These are living documents that will change as the nature of the service evolves.

To date the following services now have approved overviews:

Library IT is working with various stakeholders, user groups, and committees to move forward overviews for Avalon, GFA LAS, FindIt, Emulation as a Service, as well as the MSSA payment gateway application. For existing services, events such as an upgrade, migration, or enhancement will trigger the creation of a new overview should one not already exist. The creation of an overview is now included as a step in the implementation and deployment of new Library IT supported services.

Should you have any questions about these documents or the process Library IT has established, please do not hesitate to reach out to Ray Frohlich at raymond.frohlich@yale.edu for more information.

Library Service Overviews

Library IT began an initiative in early 2016 to implement a standard set of documentation for library services that establish expectations and the resources required to provide ongoing operational support. Borrowing similarities from service-level agreements, these overviews are internal agreements between the service owner and the library units that support the service, all of whom have an interest in service success and sustainability. These are living documents that will change as the nature of the service evolves.

To date the following services now have approved overviews:

Library IT is working with various stakeholders, user groups, and committees to move forward overviews for Ares, Avalon, FindIt, ILLiad, and other key services. For existing services, events such as an upgrade, migration, or enhancement will trigger the creation of a new overview should one not already exist. The creation of an overview is now included as a step in the implementation and deployment of new library supported services.

Should you have any questions about these documents or the process Library IT has established, please do not hesitate to reach out to Ray Frohlich for more information.

Results of the 2014 Library IT Satisfaction Survey

In Fall 2014 162 library staff members took the time to complete a survey asking them to rate the Library IT group and how it has performed on some of our major projects and services during the year.

You can see all the results (except comments) here.

The survey looks at overall perception of how Library IT performed over the year, and how well it did in specific areas such as communication, which we’ve tried to make a priority (hence this blog for example). We’ve already made some decisions based on survey results about communication. Because the LIT newsletter was judged the most popular form of communication, we are committing to repurposing blog posts in the newsletter and publishing it every two weeks via YULIB.

We also definitely saw a desire for more chances to communicate with or to LIT as well and we are working on ways to do that. We will start to hold annual Tech Talks for all major projects and services. Talks will be a half hour of background, developments and plans for changes, and then a second half hour for questions, ideas and discussion from all staff. This idea came from Enterprise Systems staff, but it seems to be such a good idea that the rest of LIT is adopting it.

There was also feedback on specific projects in the survey, and LIT staff are taking a very close look at these and thinking about places where we should make adjustments in our work. As LIT staff continue to meet and discuss the survey findings we’ll post ideas and action items with the survey results. You’ll see the first example of this with the results for the Web Migration, where we’ve started to list what we think about the results of the survey and how we want to use the results to improve our work.

Please take some time to look at the results, but also, and more importantly, continue to send us ideas and feedback so that we can make LIT work well for the library and its patrons.

LIT 2014 Satisfaction Survey