Today's schedule

Types of shifts

L-net has two basic types of shifts, cooperative and Oregon only.

During Oregon only shifts, librarians monitor QuestionPoint "queues" for Oregon patrons connecting to us through our general, academic or K-12 entry forms.

During cooperative, shifts, librarians monitor Oregon queues plus queues for some of the 1,900 libraries that participate in the OCLC/24-7 Cooperative. We answer questions for libraries outside of Oregon in the same way they answer questions for us.

There are actually two separate cooperatives, one for academic libraries and one for public and school libraries. When your library covers a cooperative shift, you will answer questions for all libraries in Oregon and also libraries outside of Oregon that are of the same type as yours.

Scheduling your library

Most libraries are scheduled in 2-hour shifts on weekdays, starting at 10am, Noon, 2pm or 4pm.

However, we now have enough coverage and flexibility in our chat schedule to have librarians online for one hour shifts and to start shifts on odd hours or even the half-hour.

Some libraries choose to be available for a range of shifts rather than be assigned to a specific one each week. This allows different staff to answer questions with L-net from week to week.

We would like to work towards having at least one librarian available 9am-6pm, Monday through Friday, with a second librarian available 10am-4pm Monday through Thursday.

Our master schedule indicates a generalized weekly schedule, and our scheduling neesd page can help you figure out where your library best fits in.

Scheduling is done at least 4 weeks in advance. During the last week of the month, the schedule is created for the month after the upcoming one. That is, at the end of October, the schedule for December is created.

We use ScheduleSource to create, maintain and report on schedules. Two tutorials are available, one created by L-net (requires PowerPoint), and one created by ScheduleSource (requires Flash). You are also welcome to simply contact the scheduler when scheduling changes are needed.

RSS and e-mail alerts

The daily schedule is always available on this page, on the L-net staff information blog and on the schedule page.

There is an RSS feed of the daily schedule at www.oregonlibraries.net/rss/schedule.rss.

You can also receive e-mail alerts of the schedule up to 4 weeks in advance. View the L-net ScheduleSource tutorial to find out more.

Responsibility

It is your library's responsibility to communicate your availability for staffing L-net and to cover shifts you are scheduled for. You will not be scheduled on most holidays.

If you know that your library will unable to cover a certain day or time in the future, request a day off through ScheduleSource or by contacting Caleb.

If you anticipate missing a shift you are already scheduled for, you should ask for a swap on the L-net e-mail discussion list.