Monthly Archives: September 2020

Customer Service Tip: What do you do for work?

By: Mat Patterson submitted by Carmen Gass

I have at least three different answers for that question, depending on who is asking:
– Soccer Dad at my kid’s game: “I work for a US software company”
– My Doctor: “mostly typing”
– Chatty seat mate at the start of a 15 hour flight: “insurance adjuster”

There is no single “best answer,” because so much depends on who you are talking to, and why. It’s just as true when delivering customer service.

Having the correct answer is only part of the job—delivering that answer in a way that the customer can understand and act upon is equally important.

High quality service comes from customer service folk who:
1. Have the necessary knowledge to answer the question correctly
2. Understand that answer deeply enough to be able to confidently explain it in several different ways
3. Can size up a customer and context and select the right approach to delivering that answer

Consistently doing all three takes skill, experience and ongoing company support to do well. It’s also why we’re so far from AI being a practical replacement for most human-powered customer
service.

Tech Tip: New to Zoom — Live Transcription

By: Ryan Johnson

Penn State Zoom Service now includes a feature that uses automatic transcription that enables speech to text transcription in Zoom Meetings and Zoom Webinars. This feature is enabled by the host of the meeting or webinar once it begins. Participants will not see the Live Transcript option unless the host enables it.

Zoom screenshot for tech tip

Users must first enable the setting within their Penn State Zoom profile in order to use it within their meeting.  Closed captioning is on by default; however users must check the sub setting below to activate live transcriptions within their meetings.

  1. Navigate to psu.zoom.us
  2. Click Sign-in, and sign in using your PSUID and password (if necessary).
  3. Click the Settings tab in the upper left corner.
  4. Search for Closed captioning found in the In Meeting (Advanced) section.
  5. Check the sub setting: Enable live transcription service to show transcript on the side panel in-meeting.

To learn more about this new feature and how to use it, please visit the new Staff Site training page: Zoom Live Transcription

Fall 2020 Libraries Exhibitions

Fall 2020 — University Libraries Exhibitions

Earth Archives exhibition posterEXHIBITION: Earth Archives: Stories of Human Impact. To coincide with the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, Earth Archives explores the intersection of the environment, human activity, and the documentary record. Highlights of the virtual exhibition include representations of varied print, manuscript, and art works that invites the viewer to consider a range of environmental-related topics and will serve as a growing, centralized resource.

 

buttons from INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY: Highlights From the Ken Lawrence Collection

EXHIBITION: International Solidarity: Highlights from the Ken Lawrence Collection. A virtual look at the visual culture of political protest in the late 20th-century, to provoke thought about international solidarity in our own time, including human and civil rights, immigration, and independence movements.

Image: Physical Plant series, Greg Grieco photographs, 07488

EXHIBITION: Celebrating the ADA: The Legacy and Evolution of Disability Rights & Lived Experience at Penn State. To coincide with the 30th anniversary of the American with Disabilities Act (ADA) on July 26, a new online exhibition, Celebrating the ADA explores the first 100 years of national disability rights legislation and the movement’s impact on the Penn State University community.

Please submit Libraries exhibit information — and all Library News submissions — to Public Relations and Marketing via its Staff Site request form and selecting the “Library News blog article” button.

Penn State University Press announces Graphic Mundi imprint

By: Cate Fricke

Graphic Mundi, a new trade imprint of comics for adults and young adults, will launch in Spring 2021. With the mission of “drawing our worlds together,” the imprint will feature both fiction and nonfiction narratives on subjects such as health and human rights, politics, the environment, science, and technology. Kendra Boileau, Assistant Director and Editor-in-Chief of Penn State University Press, is the publisher.

About her vision for the imprint, Boileau says, “Graphic Mundi will represent a broad range of voices and experiences, including those of marginalized individuals and groups, or those whose
works have not been previously accessible to anglophone readers. These graphic novels will address serious topics, but they’ll do so in engaging, provocative, and sometimes humorous ways. They’ll have the potential to transform how we see ourselves, others, and the world. The imprint is thus an excellent fit for our mission as a university press.”

Graphic Mundi expands on the current list of critically acclaimed graphic novels published by Penn State University Press, in particular its Graphic Medicine series, which launched in 2015
with the Eisner Award–nominated Graphic Medicine Manifesto. The Graphic Medicine series currently includes twenty-two active and forthcoming titles that speak to the power of visual narrative to tell complex stories about personal and public health.

The Spring 2021 titles for Graphic Mundi are: COVID Chronicles: A Comics Anthology, a collection edited by Boileau and Rich Johnson of more than forty short works about the
pandemic from mainstream and indie creators, including Ignatz Award and Eisner Award winners. Three graphic narratives of personal trauma: a sudden diagnosis of quadriplegia in Twister, by Roland Burkart; an overwhelming eating disorder in Fat, by Regina Hofer; and a child’s account of living with a mother with bipolar disorder in The Parakeet, by Espé.
Crude: A Memoir, by Pablo Fajardo, Sophie Tardy-Joubert, and Damian Roudeau, recounts the fight for social and environmental justice in the Amazonian oil fields. Dirty Biology: The X-Rated Story of the Science of Sex, by Léo and Colas Grasset, and The Body Factory: From the First Prosthetics to the Augmented Human, by Héloïse Chochois, humorously explore the biology of sex and the history of human amputation and augmentation.

Award-winning cartoonist and graphic novelist Ted Rall notes that “the graphic novel revolution has brought comics out of the humor ghetto to the front of the store. The greatest potential
for the format is in serious, intelligent takes on nonfiction, fiction, politics, and memoir that treat comics as literature,which is why I believe in the mission of Graphic Mundi. Not only
will these books be an excellent addition to readers’ bookshelves; they’ll also make our world a better place, one book at a time.”

Graphic Mundi is an imprint of Penn State University Press. Founded in 1956, Penn State University Press publishes high-quality books, journals, and graphic novels of interest to
scholars and general readers, with a focus on the humanities and social sciences. Learn more at psupress.org.

Graphic Mundi can be found on Twitter (@GraphicMundi) and Instagram (@graphicmundi) and on the web at https://graphicmundi.org/.

Tech Tip: Designate an alternative host in Zoom

By: Ryan Johnson

When scheduling a meeting, the host can designate another Licensed user on the same account to be the alternative host. The alternative host can start the meeting on the host’s behalf. When you designate an alternative host, that user or departmental account will receive an email notifying them that they’ve been added as an alternative host, with a link to start the meeting or webinar.

 Alternative host vs. Co-host

Alternative host is a more powerful role than cohost.

Alternative hosts can be designated in advance, whereas cohosts must be assigned during the meeting.

Alternative hosts have full host privileges until the host account joins the meeting and automatically becomes the host.

Co-hosts have some additional privileges in a meeting beyond a participant, but they don’t have full host powers. A co-host cannot start breakout rooms or end the meeting, for example.

How to Designate an Alternative Host

Zoom screen shot for tech tip

Customer Service Tip: Be a professional

By: Shep Hyken (submitted by Carmen Gass)

What is a professional? Is it the opposite of an amateur? In the sports world, professional athletes are paid, while amateurs are not. In my business, the title “professional keynote speaker” implies that I’m paid to speak in front of audiences. So, does being a professional simply mean you’re paid to do whatever it is you are doing? Read more here.

 

Customer Service Tip: Free mini workshop — The 3R De-escalation Method

By: Myra Golden (submitted by Carmen Gass)

COVID-19 is making customers more hostile, and you need a strategy for quickly containing the situation and de-escalating the interaction. The 3R Method is battleground tested and easy to use – ideal for when you have to give bad news, enforce a mask requirement, or get an angry customer to calm down and listen to you. Learn about it here.

Tech Tip: Using recent files on your Mac

By: Ryan Johnson

This tip is for those of you who use the Recents item in the Finder sidebar to keep track of your files.

tech tip screenshot

Recents is not a real location on your Mac. The Finder creates and updates it dynamically. In essence, this is just a collection of shortcuts to files you have recently used.

What you should remember is, whatever you do to the item in Finder’s Recents is actually applied to the original file.  If you rename a recents file, it will rename the original file. If you delete a recents file, it will delete the original.

Fall 2020 University Libraries exhibitions

Fall 2020 — University Libraries Exhibitions

Earth Archives exhibition posterEXHIBITION: Earth Archives: Stories of Human Impact. To coincide with the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, Earth Archives explores the intersection of the environment, human activity, and the documentary record. Highlights of the virtual exhibition include representations of varied print, manuscript, and art works that invites the viewer to consider a range of environmental-related topics and will serve as a growing, centralized resource.

 

buttons from INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY: Highlights From the Ken Lawrence Collection

EXHIBITION: International Solidarity: Highlights from the Ken Lawrence Collection. A virtual look at the visual culture of political protest in the late 20th-century, to provoke thought about international solidarity in our own time, including human and civil rights, immigration, and independence movements.

Image: Physical Plant series, Greg Grieco photographs, 07488

EXHIBITION: Celebrating the ADA: The Legacy and Evolution of Disability Rights & Lived Experience at Penn State. To coincide with the 30th anniversary of the American with Disabilities Act (ADA) on July 26, a new online exhibition, Celebrating the ADA explores the first 100 years of national disability rights legislation and the movement’s impact on the Penn State University community.

Please submit Libraries exhibit information — and all Library News submissions — to Public Relations and Marketing via its Staff Site request form and selecting the “Library News blog article” button.