Author: Cynthia Ng

Reviewing and Improving Workflow and Productivity: Methods and Tools

Most of our libraries and organizations have been around for numerous years, sometimes hundreds. Often that means many processes are created, changed as needed, and left in place long past their due date. Unfortunately, that means we are frequently working inefficiently, following old processes or cobbled together workflows.

The first part of the presentation will suggest methods for understanding and reviewing workflow. In the second half, we will take a look at various simple and lightweight tools and ways to use them to make work more efficient, especially in processing text, files, and data in batches.

Originally titled Tools, Tips, and Tricks to Making Work More Efficient. This webinar was presented for Florida Library Webinars on March 8, 2017. https://floridalibrarywebinars.org/events/16003/ Continue reading “Reviewing and Improving Workflow and Productivity: Methods and Tools”

Attempting to Prevent the Feeling of Unproductiveness Even When We Are Productive

This piece was originally published on February 15, 2017 as part of the The Human in the Machine publication project.

It seems it is not uncommon to finish a full day of work and feel completely unproductive. Sometimes I wonder if that’s simply a symptom of how we define what’s “productive”. Continue reading “Attempting to Prevent the Feeling of Unproductiveness Even When We Are Productive”

Adding Custom Reports to Horizon

I have been putting a lot of our reports into Horizon so that staff can take a look at them any time and do not need an intermediary. While not even SirsiDynix could help me put all of them in Horizon, I have a few in and I am adding more as I encounter them. Unfortunately, custom reports do not seem to be documented very well (or at least not that I could find, the one article I found did not make a lot of sense to me the first time I read it), so I figure I might as well post it online.
Continue reading “Adding Custom Reports to Horizon”