1 / 13

Technical Services Involvement with New Services: Are there Silos Within the Library?

Technical Services Involvement with New Services: Are there Silos Within the Library? Sharon Wiles-Young Director of Library Access Services ALCTS- Heads of Cataloging Interest Group ALA Midwinter January 23, 2012 . Lehigh University Libraries-Library and Technology Services.

nuwa
Download Presentation

Technical Services Involvement with New Services: Are there Silos Within the Library?

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Technical Services Involvement with New Services: Are there Silos Within the Library? Sharon Wiles-Young Director of Library Access Services ALCTS- Heads of Cataloging Interest Group ALA Midwinter January 23, 2012

  2. Lehigh University Libraries-Library and Technology Services • Library Technical Services teams • After merger into LTS in 1996 • Client Services Teams • Leadership role of Team Leader and Director

  3. Transition to Electronic/Digital Information • Ejournals – open the door to user centered services • Communicating directly with TS department • SFX Link resolver, assist with database • LTS Strategic plans- user focused, student/research focused • Goals-Support Lehigh scholarship and institutional memory through the creation of a digital archive of Lehigh scholarship that also encompasses distinctive Lehigh archival materials.

  4. Digital Information/Unique Collections • The digital/electronic information world has opened opportunities to cross train staff and to provide staff with new responsibilities and focus attention on redefining service needs and examining user needs BUT • What can we let go of and what should we be spending more time on? • Example: gift books student copy cataloging –shelf ready books • staff move on to other metadata –digital responsibilities

  5. Redefining the Academic Library • Redefining the Academic Library: Managing the Migration to Digital Information Services by the University Leadership Council: http://www.educationadvisoryboard.com/pdf/23634-EAB-Redefining-the-Academic-Library.pdf Section IV: Redeploying Library Staff “Library leadership must identify areas of activity that can be reduced or eliminated and begin to migrate staff to higher-value responsibilities”

  6. Example 1:New Initiatives and Staffing • CLIR Fellow (Council on Libraries and Information Resources) • Background in some special collections cataloging • Understood skills of cataloging staff • Metadata projects • Inventory projects materials coming from labs- documents needing sorting organization before digitized • Included Head of Cataloging on the IR planning committee

  7. Staff involvement • Trained staff on metadata techniques- added keyword metadata on spreadsheets to ingest into Content DM • Included all librarians in webinar and other activities to select a new software platform for the IR – Digital Commons

  8. Future for IR • Acknowledgement that TS skills will be needed specifically: Acquisitions to metadata • Question: Should all librarians be involved with author rights discussions? • ACRL Scholarly Communications Road Show at Lehigh but the involvement of all librarians ended there • All Librarians and some staff have a chance to meet with faculty formally or informally should have a general knowledge and make appropriate referrals

  9. Example 2: VuFind anotherLibrary Initiative • Design and implementation of new interface to the online catalog • Sirsi webcat not updated since the 1990’s • Commitment to open sources software • VuFind chosen and developed with others • Soft roll out of the new interface • Systems librarian with collection development librarians- discussions held in those meeting

  10. What Happened with VuFind • System’s staff realized that the catalogers were of vital importance and talked one on one but not in meetings • Asked to attend the in house demo- discovered the serials displays a problem • Need of catalogers to talk about data found in the holdings records and possible use of that information and displays of that information

  11. Skills and Partnerships New initiatives in partnering with other libraries to assist with staffing • Have libraries reorganized internal staff wisely and built partnerships in house • Identify staff skill sets and offer training Example: Government Documents coordinator- now metadata quality control member of the Digital Team

  12. Conclusion • Eliminate some processes and services as identify new roles and new strategic goals • Problem: still in transition- print materials to storage, weeding decisions • Increases Involvement of Technical Services librarians in planning of new services and examine staffing options • Another opportunity at Lehigh is Kuali/OLE development, an open source ILS system

  13. Final Observations • An important aspect of teaching and learning in higher educations is: • Collaborative learning • Provide students with effective team learning experiences • Are libraries effectively using team collaboration to examine services and new initiatives ? • Are libraries effectively identifying skill sets and interests of librarians and staff?

More Related