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On Monday, June 8th, the Access Services Team took a day long retreat. We needed and wanted to stick close to the library, and since we have such great study rooms now in the library, we used the study room on the west side of the building, (near the Graduate Student Lounge) as our home base for the day. We started with the early risers taking a trip to Krankies downtown for some coffee and treats to get our engines going.

We returned to ZSR and met the rest of the team for our meeting in 232. The goal of the day was to do a SWOT analysis (Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats) for each Access “division” and we brainstormed in big and small groups about each of these divisions: ILL, Reserves/Ereserves, Circulation, Stacks, Facilities, Media and Document Delivery. We willl utilize that information to set goals for the coming year. Another goal of the day was to write a Mission Statement for the team.

After working until noon, we went to the Deacon Grille for lunch, and then took a tour of the Deacon Tower. Lunch was delicious, (and pretty reasonable.)

Then after a tour of the Tower,

we returned to ZSR for an afternoon session to further our SWOT analysis.

The day ended at 4pm with the team revved up and ready to tackle the challenges ahead.

It was exhausting, but we discovered a great deal about each others concerns and challenges. We didn’t finish the Access Mission statement, and have a little more analysis on the SWOT charts to do, but we’ll be completing it all in the next few weeks. We know good things will result from all of this work. We appreciated being given the chance to have a day like this, (Thanks to Lynn!) and we also thank our great students who managed to problem solve sufficiently that they didn’t even need to use the emergency cell phone once!