Hi everyone,
So sorry it has taken me so long to
write this up! I’ve also attached it as a word doc. As
always, please email me with thoughts, questions, and/or
concerns (madeleinel@xxxxxxxxxxxx).
Volunteer Phone Chat October 2nd
2012
Who’s here (I hope I wrote everyone
down. I didn’t get a chance to do a roll call at the
end): Lissi, Evan, Valerie, Courtney S., Ann P., Judy
S., Kellie, Roger, Marilyn
On staff: Alisa (Volunteer Program
Manager), Madeleine (Volunteer Coordinator)
Agenda:
1.
Renewal link issues. We’ve been hearing
the complaints. We’ll let you know what we’ve found out
from engineering:
We have emailed people from
engineering and are (still) waiting to hear back. I’ll
update as soon as I know more. Everyone discussed having
a constant renewal link as something that everyone seems
to want and that we had at one time. We think that it
may have changed when we moved to this website.
Madeleine reminded everyone that she can renew your
books should something come up. Please email her off
list if you won’t be able to renew a book and she will
be happy to do it for you. If anyone has problems with
the renewal link not letting them renew their book when
they receive the email, etc., please email Madeleine
with details and a screen shot if possible. The more
specific information I have, the better!
2.
How do we want to handle it when someone
has been proofing a book for a very long time? Sometimes
there is a very valid reason (such as a really long
book), but perhaps there should be a notification? Has
anyone ever found this to be a problem?
People mentioned that a friendly
reminder would be helpful just to touch base on the
book. If I see that someone has had a book for a very
long time, I’ll shoot them a brief email to make sure
everyone is doing ok. This is certainly not meant to
rush anyone! It is only meant to be a reminder and check
in. There was also discussion about the amount of
credits per book. Some people thought that it might be
nice to base the number of credits on the size and
difficulty of a book. For example, a textbook or 600
page book would be eligible for more credits than a teen
fantasy book. We will discuss this more with staff
members and get back to you all.
3.
Wordpress blog update:
We are working on this. It currently
exists and we are in the process of creating various
categories or subheadings so as to make it easier to
navigate. The categories that everyone currently thinks
would be especially important to have are: scanning,
proofreading, image description, Microsoft Word (and
subcategories for the different years), Kurzweil, Open
Book, formatting, AT tricks, keyboard shortcuts,
Bookshare lingo, AT lingo. These may be grouped into
larger categories, but I think this is a good start. If
anyone has more ideas or thoughts on this, please email
Madeleine directly.
4.
Monitoring the discussion list upon
Mayrie’s departure:
We had an offer from a volunteer to
moderate the list, but instead, for the moment, we have
decided that Madeleine will continue to monitor and
moderate it. We strongly encourage everyone to continue
to answer questions, though! Madeleine can remove people
(such as spammers) and will answer questions if there is
a conflict in answers, but for the most part she will
leave it up to everyone else. This is what has been
happening for a little while now and we think that it
seems to be working well. All of you on the list have so
much knowledge that it seems silly not to utilize it! As
always, any concerns or questions can be emailed to
Madeleine off list.
5.
How do people feel about the new Holds
policy? Is it working? Are there enough books without
holds available for new people?
People seem fine with how things are
going. As always, we want more volunteers so everyone
has more books to choose from but no one seemed to have
any complains about the holds policy. If anyone who was
unable to make the meeting has thoughts, please email
Madeleine directly.
6.
Greeting program: should this be
implemented and would it be helpful? Perhaps it could
serve as a place to mention the mentoring program?
The thought on our end from the staff
was utilizing this program as a way for volunteers to
welcome new volunteers in a very general way (so that
those who weren’t sure that they were supposed to
introduce themselves or who felt left out would be
encouraged and included) and also give out some basic
information to new volunteers. I’m going to write
something up and send it to Lissi who has volunteered to
email it out once a week. We’ll keep it very short and
sweet. I’ll include information about mentoring and
explain the holds policy briefly.
7.
Other thoughts and comments?
Roger wanted to know about the
categories that we have to classify books. This is
actually a big discussion for the staff and we’re
redoing that list of categories to hopefully come up
with something more similar to those you might find at a
real library. We will share more as soon as we know
more.
The general consensus is that people
like the meetings and want to continue to have them once
a month.
Best,
Madeleine Linares
Volunteer Coordinator
Bookshare, a Benetech
Initiative
650-644-3459
madeleinel@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Join us in celebrating our 10th
Anniversary!
