EXCELLENCE IN SERVICE:

This award recognizes creativity, innovation, and dedication in providing service to our users through both our public service points and outreach to infrequent or non library users. It is awarded to an individual or group for creating, developing, or implementing an idea or procedure that noticeably improves overall service to our users and helps the Libraries fulfill its mission to "uphold service to the patron both on and off campus as the ultimate goal of the Libraries."

 

Nominee: Mary Linnemann
Digital Imaging Coordinator

Department:  Hargrett Library

Testimonial: Mary works very hard and does an amazing job in her demanding role. She is the definition of an asset here at Hargrett. Mary's work is hectic, on-demand and comes from multiple directions be it patron requests for photo duplication; publication scan requests; exhibit preparation; or imaging work done for a grant. Mary is proactive, not reactive, and her interest is always in serving the public to the best of her ability, even when that means doing more work or staying over time to get things done. My first example is her current management of the digitization of Hargrett's Civil War materials for the NHPRC grant. NHPRC grants are very prestigious in the archives world, and it is wonderful to be able to rely on Mary's support and diligence and to thus know that Hargrett's contributions to this project are of the highest quality. Her student assistants are also happy and ready to help as well, showing that her passion for excellent service is being passed on to them. Another example of Mary making the Hargrett look good- and only the most recent one- occurred this week in the reading room. Students from Dr. Wayde Brown's class came to use two sets of large blueprints. These were difficult materials to handle and their project required longer scrutiny than our reading room limitations allowed, so Mary as usual went above and beyond to meet the user at their place of need. She made the materials even more accessible (while cutting down on wear and tear to delicate items) by taking her own time to scan in full both sets of blueprints (several oversized pages) and making a digital copy for the entire class to use. Professor Brown was extremely pleased, as he plans to use the same materials for another class as well. This might seem trivial, but given the sheer number of tasks flying at her every single day from so many directions, the fact that Mary could see how she could make a positive impact on our users and pause her hectic day
to do so (and make Hargrett look so efficient and user-friendly at the same time)... well, it really knocks my socks off, and she does things like this literally all the time. If you can't give her an asset award, well, you need to give her a raise!                 

 

Nominee: Kelsie Crawford

Department: Acquisitions and Serial Services

Testimonial: Ability to step outside one's own day-to-day tasks and examine how his or her position supports the department, Libraries,
or community as a whole Kelsie constantly thinks about how her role and work tasks fit into the library whole. She is very interested in how her position and day-to-day tasks, such as updating "thresholds" for titles in SFX, works to support Reference Services and library
patrons. Even though it is not her department, she is interested in the Reference tasks and has come to a Reference Meeting to discuss her role. She has scheduled time to observe Reference libraries answering chat questions, so she can better understand how patrons run into problems with SFX or access issues. She likes to understand how both librarians and patrons use the interfaces she works with and how they help to solve problems. She constantly assesses her role in this process.

    Understanding of the obligation of the Libraries to "continually assess patron needs and use this information as the chief guidepost for implementing change" Initiative in suggesting new policies, procedures, or techniques as a need emerges rather than waiting
until the need is overwhelming or requested by others. Willingness to communicate with patrons and treat their needs as a high priority;Flexibility in production and service delivery; Outreach to and engagement of library users and non-users in new and creative ways
Kelsie meets all of these criteria exceptionally well. She sometimes needs to talk to patrons to resolve access issues, and in the process she notices needs and potential for outreach. She has brought up a couple of ideas for outreach to share with reference librarians. She provided extensive assistance explaining to an atypical patron (an Administrative assistant helping a professor) how to find journals online. She then reported to the Reference library liaison for that department, so the liaison could offer further service and be aware of needs not met. She is focused on serving the patron and knocks on
all doors to do the best job possible.

 

 

Nominee: Mary Willoughby

Department: DLG

Testimonial: I am nominating Mary Willoughby for Excellence in
Service for her continued dedication and service to the DLG.

Along with her patience and conviviality, Mary has consistently
brought innovation, creativity, and initiative to her work in the DLG. She has developed numerous digital production workflows in the DLG that have maximized limited resources, improved the quality of work produced in our unit, expanded access to digitized content, and made it more discoverable. Through her ambitious and persistent problem-solving, she has resolved issues in numerous workflows by her own hand. She is also an effective technical instructor who has created training materials that not only disseminate information on how to perform specific tasks, but also clarify complex concepts and/ or arcane processes in a practical and plain-spoken way. Her attention
to this level of communication is key to ensuring higher-quality work from student employees, departmental staff, and collaborative partners with whom DLG works on an intradepartmental, interdepartmental, and inter-institutional basis.

Mary's considerable wisdom and ability to communicate effectively are significant, important contributions to our department, and to UGA Libraries. And although crediting someone with their institutional knowledge sounds like faint praise, in this case, it's not. Mary has been a generous and informative resource on DLG legacy projects
for her colleagues; her accessibility and generosity have proven to be extremely helpful to newer members of our staff who have had to
learn not only about the items represented in our collections, but also the practices and processes with which these resources were produced, how they are made accessible, and how they are
preserved over time, questions that are asked by users when we address user queries or make public presentations.

I have already described Mary as innovative, dedicated, generous
and patient, but that's because she is, and the presence of these qualities in our work environment make it all the better to be a part of, and all the better to serve our users.

 

 

Nominee: Ian Thomas

Department: Science Reference

Testimonial: Ian is an outstanding librarian, especially as far as outreach goes.
- He holds weekly reference hours in 3 different disciplines on South Campus (Pharmacy, Physics and Chemistry)
- He regularly meets with faculty and staff in other disciplines such as Mathematics and Computer Science
- He co-ordinates the mass classes each semester (Biology, Ecology, Marine Science), including meeting with the lab coordinators and
TA's; holding follow up sessions with the TA's; developing assessment tools to gauge the effectiveness of the classes; ensuring equipment is working properly; and assuring classrooms are set up both at Science and the MLC.
- and if that was not enough, a phone call from an anguished faculty member or grad student has him running across campus to give assistance at the drop of a hat.
Ian really does take "Service" to a whole new level.  His ability to look at a problem from many angles and come to a workable solution are great assets.  His willingness to drop everything and assist those in need is extraordinary.  What an asset for UGA Libraries!   

 

 

Nominee: Jan Levinson

Department: Russell Library

Testimonial: Jan is on the cusp of something big. Not only did she
work many long overtime hours to produce the wonderful exhibits for Russell, but she provides excellent to her patrons and is always a professional representative of the Russell and the Special Collections libraries on the whole. Jan is cooking up some exciting, cutting edge new ideas and techniques for outreach, to connect us to our community and to expand that community, and that's extremely valuable to support this building and its mission. I hope we use some of her ideas.