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Background
The first floor of Willis Library housed seven service desks: the Checkout Desk, Circulation Desk, Reserves Desk, Fines Desk, Interlibrary Loan Desk, Tech Desk and Reference Desk. In the Summer of 2011, the Reserves Desk and Fines Desk were consolidated with the Circulation Desk. Facilities and Systems took over management of the Checkout Desk. Circulation thus became responsible for staffing and managing one service desk which offered circulation, reserves and fines collection services. In the Fall of 2011, the Circulation and ILL departments were merged together to form the Access Services Department. Circulation staff was trained to conduct ILL services at the Circulation Desk. As a result, the Circulation Desk offered circulation, reserves, fines and ILL services. In the Summer of 2012, another important merger took place. The Reference Desk was merged with the Circulation Desk to create a single service point. A new name was created for the desk, the Library Services Desk. Managers from both Access Services and Reference worked together to implement transitioning to a single service point. Training plans were created and hours of operation were discussed. Circulation staff would answer basic reference questions. Reference staff (Graduate Library Assistants) would answer basic circulation questions. An on-call librarian service was created to respond to in-depth reference questions. Walkie-talkies were used to contact the on-call librarian. Willis office 123, adjacent to the Library Services Desk, was established as a meeting room on-call librarians could use when needed. In December 2012, managers of the Access Services and Reference Departments met to discuss how well the merged desk was functioning by answering a series of service desk assessment questions.
