Featured: Public Services Department Retreat
Public Services held its annual department retreat on August 12. Staff reviewed progress toward 2025-26 departmental goals and priorities for 2026-27; departmental successes, challenges and opportunities; and updates from colleagues on their individual and collaborative work.
Core Operations
Public Services began the fall semester with a major student staffing and onboarding effort, hiring 12 new student employees. Public Services staff participated in ZSR’s Fall Student Hiring Fair and worked throughout August to identify staffing needs, recruit students, establish schedules, complete Workday hiring processes, and prepare new employees for training. The work supports student staffing across the Library Services Desk and collection-maintenance operations throughout the academic year.
The Public Services Team is also working with the Learning and Development unit within Human Resources on a climate assessment initiative to identify strengths, challenges, opportunities, and priorities to support the ongoing improvement of the workplace environment. The group met on August 19, 2026 to discuss findings in the areas of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats, and career path.
Collections
Members of the Public Services team are working with Jess Wilson-Saia and Thomas Dowling on customizing Alma’s functionality to anonymize check out history data from Alma’s Fulfillment module.
Laura Milcarzyk, Patrick Ferrell, and the Public Services student employees continue to work on the smaller-scale shifting projects, including returning the ML call numbers from their temporary location to their home on the 8th floor.
User Services
With classes beginning August 24, User Services transitioned into fall operations at the Library Services Desk. August work included coordinating student schedules, preparing new student employees for onboarding and training, and ensuring service coverage for the beginning of the semester.
Book Displays
August Displays
- People Have Always Been People: A Look at Human History Through Art, curated by Erin Jones
- America’s Best Idea: National Parks & the Threats They Face, curated by Erin Jones
- Rarely Making History: Overlooked People Who Contributed to Modern Inventions, curated by Erin Jones
- Conditions Remain Unstable: Reading Through Uncertainty, curated by Will Ritter
Upcoming Displays
- AI in Law, curated by the Wake Forest Law Library (part of the upcoming ZSR & Law Libraries display sharing collaboration!)
- Connecting the Library and the Classroom , curated by Laura Milcarzyk and Will Ritter
- Cozy Mysteries, curated by Erin Jones
- Through the Lens: A Camera History from The Studio A Space for Digital Innovation, curated by Information Systems (IS)
- Substance Abuse Month, curated by Will Ritter and the Wellness Center
Content Access & Delivery
After 7 years, 9 months and 1 day (!) Kevin Gilbertson and James Harper have finally been able to change the authentication method for the ZSR Delivers suite of services to SSO (Single Sign On), putting this service in line with the rest of campus. Signing in to ZSR Delivers will now be easier, allowing users to log in with their university Google account.
Off-Site Storage
In August, Offsite Storage team:
- delivered 65 physical items,
- fulfilled 15 electronic requests,
- accessioned 58 items,
- and audited 13,495 items.
Thanks to the hard work of Ty Wilson, the shelf-reading audit project is moving along nicely. Aisles 1, 2, and 3 are now complete, representing over 20,000 trays of books that have been audited, verified, and corrected. To date, 246,071 items have been audited successfully!
Alayna Veasey is learning more about artifact handling and storage from the Wake Forest Historical Museum. With the help of her student team, she continues to conduct SCA shifting projects to make room for new collections and university publications.
In August, Alayna:
- fulfilled 19 SCA offsite requests,
- returned 28 SCA offsite requests,
- and shifted 7 SCA boxes offsite.
Professional Activities & Development
To better support the department’s student employees, Laura Milcarzyk, Jemma Johnson, Peter Romanov, and Patrick Ferrell attended several campus trainings for student supervisors.
Collaborations
Parking and Transportation Advisory Committee: Rodrigo Castro was appointed as the Faculty Senate’s liaison to the Parking and Transportation Advisory Committee. This committee is responsible for reviewing appeals and discussing topics associated with parking and transportation.
Campus Services Fair: Along with several other ZSR volunteers, Laura Milcarzyk staffed the library’s table at the Campus Services Fair, showing off all the great services ZSR provides.
Facilities: The HVAC installation project on Reynold 8 was completed. The Facilities Team is now working on getting everything ready for the installation of the remaining HVAC unit on Reynolds 1, which will happen during the Winter Break.
Statistics
Browse previous editions of What’s Happening in Public Services here.
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