A Far, Far Better Place

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A Far, Far Better Place
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Adapting to Change in Technical Services
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The University of Toledo

• Laura Kinner, Director of Technical Services
• Lucy Duhon, Serials Librarian and Coordinator of
  Serials and Electronic Resources
• Alice Crosetto, Acquisitions Librarian and
  Coordinator of Collection Development

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What are you Tech Services people doing in there?
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What do we do without our beloved cards?
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Who are we?

• Baby Boomer
• 1946-1964
• Traditional
• Professionally loyal
• Jump started
• new technology

• Silent Generation
• 1925-1945
• Patriotic
• Ambitious
• Use technology -
• of the time

• Generation X
• 1965-1976
• Self-reliant
• Reject rules
• Use technology

• Millennials
• 1977-1998
• Self-inventive
• Rewrite the rules
• Assume technology

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The University of Toledo Technical
Services Administrator/Faculty Librarian
1 Faculty Librarians 4 Support Staff 11

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Tech Services Summit
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How we got to this place

• By the early 1990s
•      30 percent increase in mid-career female lib
  rarians
• By 2000
• the number of male librarians had begun to drop,
  from 20 percent to 18 percent of the librarian
  workforce
• By 2008
• the same swell of early '90s librarians is
  beginning to look toward retirement

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Present-day Challenges

• Society
•      a more educated, do-it-yourself world
  -------gt has impacted our profession  Amazon,
  Wikipedia, LibraryThing, blogs, Google, via
  consumer reviews, tagging, self-service book and
  article retrieval, etc. 
• Technology
•      rapid technological change -------gt has
  forced a shift to the electronic, document
  delivery, ephemeral nature of information. Old
  news is forgotten and no one reads MF anymore
  but does anyone really read e?? 
•  
• Economy
• shrinking budgets ------gt have forced space
  considerations, prompted outsourcing,
  resource-sharing, fewer staff doing more.

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Society

• SOLUTIONS
•  
• meet consumers and customers on their turf and in
  their preferred environments 
•  
•  
• IN TECHNICAL SERVICES
•  
• usage statistics, delivery options
• worker flex time, make use of individual skills,
  get out of back room
• approach by individual and generational strengths

• CHALLENGES
•  
• mobile, diverse, educated, non-traditional,
  GLOBAL, multicultural, and MULTI-GENERATIONAL
  populations
•  
• IN TECHNICAL SERVICES
•   
• keeping collections relevant, current,
  in-demand, fluid
• greater diversity of staff and their needs

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Technology

• CHALLENGES
•  
• distance and e-learning
• social networking
• mobile communication
•  
• IN TECHNICAL SERVICES
•   
• keeping up with expectations
• keeping up with format changes
• ephemeral nature of information/potential loss

• SOLUTIONS
• become smart about new technology and methods of
  learning and communication 
•  
• IN TECHNICAL SERVICES
•  
• encourage experimentation
• meet user halfway
• shift allocations to support e-resources and
  purchases that augment e-learning.
• Shift focus to preserving information

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Economy

• CHALLENGES
•  
• funding for education, inflation, technological
  upkeep, competition 
•  
•  
• IN TECHNICAL SERVICES
•  
• lack of funding for professional positions
• lack of funding for collections 

• SOLUTIONS
•  
• educate/advocate for library within institution
  or state, be part of technological revolution  
• IN TECHNICAL SERVICES
•  
• move staff, use staff creatively
• de-duplicate collections, share resources,
  document delivery, keep a core of traditional
  materials, outsource

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Coming out of the back room

• Mr. Striver at Tellsons Bank
• http//charlesdickenspage.com/illustrations-cities
  .html

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To survive, Technical Services must...

• seek out and hear the younger generations
•  
• create and innovate, in addition to organizing
•  
• integrate the wisdom of the older generations
• be indispensible, visible and proud
•  

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A Far, Far Better Place

• Future
• What does this all mean for the Technical
  Services department of the future?

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Planning session
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And now for the budget
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Please, Sir, I beg you, where are the journals?
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A Far, Far Better Place

• Serials Management
• Electronic resources not so much versus print
  resources
• Consortial purchasing

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Negotiating with your consortium.
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Staff confusion?
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strations-cities.html
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Trust me, I know how this works!
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A Far, Far Better Place

• Evolving Technologies
• Marshall Breeding
• Rachel Gordon

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Out with the old---in with the new
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A Far, Far Better Place

• Than we have ever known!
• Thank you
• laura.kinner_at_utoledo.edu
• lucy.duhon_at_utoledo.edu
• alice.crosetto_at_utoledo.edu