Dear Colleagues, please find below the observation of Mac Mestayer
regarding staffing of owl shifts. I fully share Mac's conclusions.
Volker Burkert
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Dear CLAS Collaborator;
We have had several instances lately in which shift leaders
have demonstrated a lack of training or knowledge of CLAS
operations. Because of this, we have lost some beam time and
have unneccesarily paged our experts and run coordinators.
This problem is especially important for the owl shift.
We propose several remedies:
1) many of the owl-shift leaders are relatively inexperience
students or post-docs. It is important that the senior members
at each institution communicate with these persons to determine
whether they feel competent running the experiment. Our younger
people take a disproportionate number of these shifts; the senior
people must take responsibility for their readiness.
2) documentation is scattered and sometime out-of-date. We
remind you of the primary sources of information:
- the elogbook. Read it regularly, especially before taking shifts.
- the shift-taker's manuals: linked under the Hall-B page.
- the current run information page; also linked under the Hall-B page.
It is the system experts' responsibility to keep these pages up-to-date.
Inform them of any deficiencies.
3) we may need a "super-expert" status level which would be required
to be the owl shift leader. This requires a by-law and we ask you
all to consider this.
Your ideas and feedback are encouraged.
"mestayer@jlab.org", (757)-269-7252