Thursday, January 13, 2011

Cheerleading continues

Cathi and I really try to paint a positive view of our Koha experience, especially for the staff. I've been asked by some staff members how I can keep my cool with some of the problems that we have had with the migration. It's simple, it doesn't do anyone any good when the project leader loses focus. We want the staff to know that we have confidence in the system and that we will work out all the bugs.

We continue with our weekly Koha Task Force meetings. I have asked the members to not only let us know the new or on-going problems that they encounter but also any fixes or work-arounds that have resolved problems during the week. I think there are times that the problems resolved are forgotten.

I have also asked that the staff present a more positive view of the system to our patrons. Too often staff will blame the new system when it's really their own inexperience of how the system works. We certainly don't want the public to be skeptical about the new system.... they will question every time that they need to pay a fine. They will blame it on the new system too.

Today, we are at the one month mark of using Koha! We have had more publicity, ArcadiaPatch did a really nice interview with our Library Director, Carolyn Garner-Reagan. Next week we will be meeting with another local library concerning our migration. They are also thinking about migrating to Koha.

Jackie

3 comments:

  1. http://thedeskset.org/?p=3351 is a really nice writeup another library new to Koha has just done

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  2. Hello from the other Arcadia! (www.arcadia.edu, or search.arcadia.edu for the library)
    I appreciated reading this post, as someone who continues to believe in Koha despite staff frustration with it. I also frequently have the problem of staff thinking something is wrong with Koha when they have forgotten something about the workflow, and it is hard to know how to convey that confidence.

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  3. We had a similar struggle with getting staff to see the whole picture and to realize that sometimes their frustration is because Koha can not do want they want it to do; but, sometimes their frustration is because they are trying to force Koha to mimic our old ILS when the solution is to create a different work flow that in some cases SAVED time.

    One thing we did was try to counter negative customer response with offers to meet with reference staff to have a one on one/sit down tour of Koha. We found that if the customer was willing to sit down for even just 5 minutes and let us show them how it worked, they left happy.

    We also had to tell staff that sharing their frustrations and/or negative opinions with the public was not allowed. Especially because like in your situation, they were quick to blame Koha for everything.

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