Often Library personnel will contact members of the LTAS staff directly for assistance. As members in this service profession, we are not going to turn you down, but we will often ask you to submit an INFORM or create a ticket for you. You may wonder, “Why do we do this?”
First and foremost, LTAS staff often are in the middle of tasks or meetings, conferences or even on vacation. So if you want to get your issue seen, always submit an INFORM. But then if there has been no movement within 72 hours, contact one of us and we will see what is going on.
Second, LTAS is staffed by multiple personnel who can assist – you should not rely upon one individual. Please make use of INFORM so the work can be distributed as needed.
Third, we really would like for you, the user, to submit the INFORM since only you can describe what you are experiencing. Having someone else submit the ticket for you often causes confusion and/or a back-and-forth exchange as we try to get more information. When submitting tickets, please provide as much details as possible so we do not have to approach you again with clarification. Otherwise, this will delay in resolving your issue.
And finally, we need to be able to objectively state we have been able to serve our users and one of the best ways we can do that is through INFORM. By providing this essential data, we are able to track issues and our responsiveness to resolving those issues. We can also track the volume and any possible patterns. For instance, the start of the semester we normally see an uptick in tickets so we need to plan for this accordingly.
So to address the question, “Why do we do this?” – it’s for your benefit, the user, in the long run. Work with us and help us make Vanderbilt Libraries the best place to work at Vanderbilt!
