LIS 901B: Summer 2005 Lecture 10

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LIS 901B Summer 2005Lecture 10

• Technical Services Organization, Management and
  Future Trends

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Management of Technical Services

• Only the biggest libraries have librarians
  without management responsibilities
• Management is unavoidable
• Its part of professional life
• Justifies higher salaries
• Librarians determine what libraries do
• Even fewer non-managerial librarians in technical
  services

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Management of TS (cont.)

• Top management
• Library directors, CIOs
• Middle management
• Library directors, assistant directors,
  department heads
• Unit management
• Library directors, assistant directors,
  department heads unit heads, team leaders,
  volunteer coordinators, etc.

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Job Titles of TS Administrators

• Technical Services Librarian
• Chief Acquisitions Librarian
• Head, Monographic Acquisitions Section
• Head of Technical Services
• Director of Technical Services
• Serials and Electronic Collections Librarian
• Head Cataloger

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Job Titles of TS Administrators (cont.)

• Head, Cataloging Department
• Senior Cataloger
• Cataloging/Systems Support Librarian
• Cataloging Manager

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What Makes TS Management Special?

• Service to in-house constituencies
• External business relations
• Close association with computer operations
• Extra-mural cooperation and external standards
• Production driven
• Reliance on support staff
• Financial management

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Service to In-House Constituencies

• Service to reference librarians
• Quick acquisition of materials
• Catalog (especially under authority control)
• Service to circulation staff
• Bibliographic and holdings records
• Inventory information
• Service to administration
• Statistical reports

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Service to In-House Constituencies (cont.)

• Service to patrons
• Relations with requestors
• Relations with selectors
• Relations with donors
• Catalog error reports

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External Business Relations

• Parent body departments
• Personnel
• Financial
• With publishers
• With vendors and suppliers
• With automation suppliers
• With consortium participants
• With exchange partners

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Close Association with Computer Operations

• Sometimes computer operations managed by
  technical services manager
• Early adopter of computer services
• Heavy user of computer services
• Most demanding user
• Creates/maintains the base data
• Participates in design specifications

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Extra-mural Cooperation and External Standards

• Earliest consortia for shared cataloging
• Cataloging standards
• Relationship between local needs and external
  standards

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Production Driven

• Services often judged by
• Quantity
• Unit Cost
• Perceived local benefits

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Reliance on Clerical and Para-Professional Staff

• Supervision is ubiquitous
• From Webster existing or being everywhere at the
  same time constantly encountered widespread
• Job descriptions and differentiation
• Training is constant
• Evaluation is required

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Financial Management

• Budgeting
• Operations budgeting
• Unit cost assessment
• Collections budgeting
• Purchase price negotiations
• Vendor performance monitoring
• Price projections

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Shortage of TS Managers

• Shortages of all types of managers
• Shortages of technical services managers
• Small applicant pools
• Readvertising common
• Preparing for management positions
• Small project management
• Continuing education

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Advantages of Going Into Management

• Money
• Mobility
• Power/prestige
• Realize service vision

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Nine Steps Toward Better Recruiting for TS
Librarians

• Design good jobs
• Dont look for more than you need
• Build a better recruiting network
• Look beyond home base
• Identify categories of people to recruit
• Offer good salaries

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Nine Steps Toward Better Recruiting for TS
Librarians

• Provide attractive staff services
• Evaluate job candidates effectively
• Be open and honest with everyone

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Theory into Practice Making the Transition

• Preparation for ones first job theory plus
• Support systems for new hires
• The bottom line an investment

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How TS Can Contribute to Effective Public Services

• Communication and cooperation between technical
  and public services
• Development and maintenance of the catalog
• Technical knowledge
• Development of digital library
• Metadata

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How TS Can Contribute to Effective Public
Services (cont.)

• Instruction in catalog use
• Library staff
• Patrons
• Keeping up with the field

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Where Have We Been and Where Are We Going?

• And what did you say technical services are?
  (is?)
• What technical services is good at bringing
  order to chaos

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Functions of TS Librarians

• Carry out technical services activities
• Acquire, organize, store access, preserve
  knowledge
• Coordinate technical services workflow
• Provide technical expertise

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Organization of Technical Services

• Historically kept together organizationally to
• Develop and use specialized knowledge
• Maintain economies of scale (share expensive
  resources and tools)
• Coordinate efforts
• Many tend to confuse the functions themselves
  with how libraries historically have organized to
  carry out these functions

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Organization of Technical Services (cont.)

• The reasons we carry out these functions remain
  the same
• Must be tied to libraries principles of service
• Freedom of inquiry
• Promotion of a knowledgeable and informed society
• Equitable distribution of knowledge
• And the central role of libraries in the above

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Organization of Technical Services (cont.)

• Those performing technical services need to
  perform their jobs for a purpose and know how
  that purpose ties into the librarys overall
  goals
• Avoid emphasizing process over services by tying
  individual and/or departmental goals to service

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Traditional Organization of Technical Services

• Departmental
• Hierarchical
• Materials moves linearly (from acquisitions to
  cataloging to circulation) while communication
  may need to move up a level or two before
  crossing departments

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Reorganization

• Need to move from
• Maximizing efficiency to maximizing flexibility
  and coordination
• Looking at efficiency to looking at effectiveness
• Focus on capabilities of processes to focus on
  capabilities of employees

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Reorganization (cont.)

• Could reorganize around meeting the needs of the
  users (client-centered) by centering activities
  (technical and public together) around groups
  of users
• Children/adults/special needs
• Undergraduate/graduate/faculty
• Science/social science/humanities

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Reorganization (cont.)

• Could reorganize around information services
  (Boissonnais)
• Delivery- acquisitions, ILL, circulation,
  preservation
• Mediation- selection, cataloging, reference
• And then forge links between the two services

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Reorganization (cont.)

• Both the above reorganizations add flexibility
  and coordination
• Shared responsibility
• Pooling of staff
• Ability to focus staff on urgent needs (getting
  out large orders, scanning in electronic
  reserves, etc.)

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Reorganization (cont.)

• Alternative organizations have become possible
  because of technological changes that brought
  about the integrated library systems and
  individual workstations
• Consider the cost of change
• Are technical and public services merging,
  and should they?
• Most importantly, does the organization serve its
  users well or can it do better?

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Too Much with Too Little

• Growing collections
• Growing e-resource collections
• Shrinking technical services departments

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Boosting Productivity

• Updating staff skills
• Changing workflows
• Rethinking assumptions
• Learning what users find truly important
• Better equipment and tools
• Better use of technology
• Managing change

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Some TS Workflow Redesign Principles

• Look at the whole process (e.g., selection to
  ordering to receipt to cataloging to shelf-ready)
• To the greatest extent possible, handle items
  only once
• Capture bibliographic data as far upstream as
  possible
• Perform work where it makes the mostbsense
• Maximize acquisitions/cataloging collaboration
• Maximize use of support staff

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Libraries, Librarians Technical Services

• for the Next 5 to 10 Years Tops!

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Digital Library Myths

• Soon everything will be digital
• Digital is better than print
• Digital replaces print
• Digital is cheaper than print
• Digital serves all disciplines equally well
• All digital library projects are worth our
  attention

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Issues Trends General

• It was the best of times, it was the worst of
  times
• A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens

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Issues Trends General

• We must all be concerned with the future -because
  were going to spend the rest of our lives
  there.
• -Charles Kettering

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Technology and Todays College Freshmen

• Popcorn has always been cooked in the microwave.
• Atari pre-dates them they never played Pac Man.
• Born the year Sony introduced the Walkman.
• Compact discs were introduced when they were 1
  year old. You sound like a broken record means
  nothing to them
• Have always had VCRs, cable TV, remote controls,
  and MTV.

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Technology the New Librarian

• Never used an electric eraser or tied catalog
  cards.
• Dont know the difference between the Red and
  Blue rules, nor do they care that OCLC cards had
  subject headings that werent printed in red.
• Think 10 days is a long wait for an ILL item.
• Think Sigma 9 is another galaxy, Beehives are
  places are to make honey, and that Rowland Brown
  might have been a power forward for the Knicks.
• Have only used online catalogs, never searched
  through paper cumulations of indexes, and are
  unaware of any debate about closing the catalog

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Changes Facing Libraries

• Greater demand for customized client services
• Higher expectations for content management of
  print and e-resources
• Increasing demands for the latest technology

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Issues Trends The Hybrid Library

• Libraries are, and will remain, a varied and
  complex mix of collections and services
• Collections will continue to be in print,
  electronic, and digital formats
• Services must increasingly be disconnected from
  time and place
• Staff will be called upon to gain new
  competencies and fulfill new roles

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Issues Trends Indexes

• Authentication issues
• Lease v. purchase (continued access
  preservation)
• The plethora of databases available often leaves
  the user adrift
• Problems that need solving
• Robust authentication
• Integration of access (one-stop searching,
  linking to content, etc.)
• Advice and guidance on database selection

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Issues Trends Content

• We are still in low hanging fruit mode
• We will continue to have islands of digital
  content in a sea of print
• Therefore
• We need to integrate access to information in all
  forms
• We need to make print more desirable

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Issues Trends Personnel

• Staff will be called upon to do an increasing
  variety of technical and non-technical tasks
• Learning on-the-job and constantly is required
• When hiring, personality traits count more than
  skills or experiences

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Desirable Personality Traits

• An ability to learn constantly and quickly
• Personal and professional flexibility
• An innate skepticism toward technology
• A propensity to take risks
• An abiding public service perspective

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Desirable Personality Traits (cont.)

• An appreciation of what others offer and the
  ability to work cooperatively
• Skill at enabling and fostering change
• The capacity and desire to work independently

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Being In Their Face Why?

• Many catalogs and search systems are difficult to
  understand and use
• Users need help at the moment they get stuck
  email is inadequate
• Unless assistance is obvious and convenient, the
  user will remain stuck
• Other, readily available information sources, can
  be convenient but inadequate (web search engines,
  for example)

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What We Must Do Individually

• Learn constantly
• Make strategic learning decisions
• Be flexible
• Dont move at the speed of the organization

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Predictions

• There will be no wholesale retrospective
  conversion of print material to digital
• In some areas (e.g. novels) there will be little
  migration to e-books. In other areas, such as
  reference or textbooks, print will disappear
• Academic print journals will be replaced by
  electronic journals

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Predictions

• Decline of print and TV news media due to web
  delivery, but will still be dominated by existing
  media corporations
• Expansion of specialized electronic newsletters
• Most mainstream journal articles will be
  available via document delivery access will be
  possible by bypassing the library

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Predictions

• Libraries will increasingly spend their time
  managing the tools to access information and
  advising on use and less on acquiring and
  organizing primary material
• Tools to assist end users will improve rapidly
• Small interest groups will have increasingly
  sophisticated ways to control and organize the
  information resources they generate
• Agree or Disagree

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Conclusion?

• Anyone who remains calm in the midst of all
  this confusion simply does not understand the
  situation.

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Yogi Berra

• Prediction is very hard, especially when its
  about the future.