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Job Outline and Expectations

As per contract, a Production Assistant is to work 15 hours a week.

If there is an illness, or other similar circumstance, that prevents the employee from working a full 15 hours they must contact their direct supervisor, the Production Coordinator, in advance.

The Supervisor will send out a spreadsheet that the Production Assistant can use to track their weekly hours within their contracted time. This is an unofficial document meant to help the employee keep track of their contracted hours.

All Productions Assistants are expected to work 15 hours per week. Hours can only be banked in exceptional circumstances and this must be discussed with and approved by the Production Coordinator in advance.

The main duty of this position is to produce books that are in accessible formats. The Production Assistant will reformat converted ebooks in Microsoft Word as outlined in this eText Wiki, and with the direct guidance and support of the Supervisor.

If there is a section on the wiki that is not clear, ask the Supervisor for clarification.

Titles for production are found in the RT system in the Production queue. There are various levels of priority to these titles:

  • Urgent
  • High
  • Medium
  • Low

When a Production Assistant is choosing a title to work on it is expected for them to take the Urgent tickets first. These are titles that have been directly requested by our patrons. It is also expected for the Production Assistants to regularly check the queue to see if any new Urgent tickets have been added. Sometimes a ticket will be assigned to you by the Supervisor.

All tickets assigned to Production Assistants by the Supervisor take priority over all other work. The Supervisor may also assign specific deadlines to titles.

The Production Assistant will use their own laptop along with a current and updated version of Microsoft Word. UAlberta Hub offers free 365 to students that can be downloaded directly to their computer. It is the Production Assistant's responsibility to ensure they are using the latest software on a reliable computer.

A Production Assistant is expected to produce titles on an ongoing and regular basis.

After the first two months of orientation, a Production Assistant is expected to produce titles on a regular basis. Below is a breakdown of the average times it takes to produce different genres of books.

Book Type Average Work Hours
Novels (no images) 2
Novels (images) 4
Nonfiction (images/graphs/endnotes) 10
Poetry 1.5
Plays 1.5
Cookbooks/Complex Formatting 15
Textbooks 40
Children's Picture Books 10
Illustrated Books 5
If a Production Assistant is not meeting these expectations Progressive Discipline will be applied.

If there is ever any down time in production, the Production Assistant is expected to do metadata work as outlined by the wiki.

Other projects may be assigned to the Production Assistant at the discretion of the Supervisor. If this occurs the Supervisor will communicate the project outcome and expectations within the Production Assistant's current workflow. Production Assistants will not be paid extra for any additional projects, and will negotiate with the Supervisor if they have time to include the additional work into their current workflow. If additional projects are assigned they take lower priority to book production.

public/nnels/etext/pa-outline-expectations.1594340503.txt.gz · Last modified: 2020/07/09 17:21 by farrah.little