21st-Century Technical Services:The UNLV Libraries Experience

Brad Eden, Ph.D.

Head, Bibliographic and Metadata Services

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

beden@ccmail.nevada.edu

Library of Congress

• Loss of 50% of technical services staff in next 5-10 years

• “Perfection” went out 15-20 years ago

• Recent mandate from Congress: more digital and digitization projects, less “cataloging”

OCLC

• WorldCat will become a metadata catalog; no longer MARC-based

• CORC/Connexion will become the cataloging interface of the future

• Sets of multilingual, vernacular databases worldwide, manipulated by linguistic crosswalks

• Access, not perfection

Library schools

• Technical services functions (cataloging, acquisitions, etc.) are no longer or are slowly moving out of the core curriculum

• Fewer professional “cataloging” graduates entering technical services; moving into corporate, technology fields

Support staff in technical services

• Now are doing duties that professionals did 10 to 20 years ago

• Often are better educated, have more experience

• Paid less, given little training or continuing education

Forecast - Two Approaches

• Continue on the same course; business as usual; keep surviving (barely)

• Proactively direct, strategize, initiate, revitalize our departments

Some citations

• “Cataloger? Knowledge Manager? What do you want to be called?” Information Technology Newsletter, v.11, no.2, Summer 2000, p. 5-6, 10.

• “Technical Services: a vision for the future” Library Computing, v.18, no.4, 1999, p. 289-94.

• “Technical Services: preparing for the future” Information Technology Newsletter, Summer 2001.

• “Knowledge Access Management in Lied Library…” Library Hi-Tech (v. 20, no. 1, 2002) issue on UNLV’s new Lied Library.

“Business as usual”

• Continue to cite cataloging rules, authority control, way it has always been done

• Don’t deal with issues: inefficiency, redundancy of work, dehumanization of support staff

Proactively direct, strategize, initiate, revitalize

1. Efficiency – conduct a process review

2. Outsource redundancy – copy cataloging

3. Reutilize and retrain all TS staff towards a strategic future

Towards what future?

• Anything and everything that you can think of

• Be creative, original, take risks, think strategically

• Depends on each library’s situation

Some ideas

• Metadata cataloging    Efforts to describe and provide access to information contained in

digitization efforts and digital projects    Access and description of electronic and Internet resources in all its

myriad forms Consultants for database design and development for faculty and staff

involved in grant projects (at the academic library level)• Become grant writers/initiators   Collaboration between and among other information organizations

(museums, libraries, archives, government, public and private corporations, etc.)

• Consultants and experts in continuing education and training initiatives for library professionals and staff, both on-the-job and in librarianship itself  

More ideas

•  Risk-taking in futuristic and innovative solutions and approaches to acquiring, describing, accessing, and archiving information in its many forms, and ways of measuring its usefulness and applicability towards the needs of patrons and users (glad to see this statement on this in Syracuse Library’s strategic plan)

• Establishment of electronic text centers, in which technical services staff assist patrons in the customization and organization of their information into useable formats and packages

What about a name change?

• “Cataloger” “Cataloging” just doesn’t cut it

• What about…• Knowledge manager• Bibliographic manager• Metadata expert/specialist• Information organizerSee “A shortage of academic

librarians” in Chronicle of Higher Education

http://chronicle.com/jobs/2002/08/2002081401c.htm

Article in Library Computing(v. 18, no. 4, 1999)

“Technical services: a vision for the future”

• Consider a name change

• Cooperation and collaboration within the library and the academic community

• Don’t ever say “no”

• Be willing to take risks, try new things

• Access, not perfection

My comments in Metadata and its application (2002, p. 70)

• Actively seek and participate in digitization and digital project development and planning being initiated in their area

• Educate themselves and their colleagues about the importance of metadata and its benefits in the organization, description, retrieval, and preservation of digital objects

• Become active in the marketing of skills and talents that information organizations have, in order to assist the world as digital information increases in quantity and complexity

Comments in Diffuse Libraries: Emergent Roles for the Research Library in the Digital

Age (p. 22)“Participation in new learning communities, in new ventures for knowledge management or dissemination, or in service to new markets requires investment in technology infrastructure and expertise in the handling of digital resources and tools.”

“Investment in professional development, training, and participation in collaborative opportunities that can help advance organizational development are essential.”

http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub108/pub108.pdf

The UNLV Libraries Experience

• Reorganization of technical services into Knowledge Access Management (KAM)

• Process review of all departmental procedures

• Outsourcing of redundant cataloging = shelf-ready books

• Movement towards digital projects/digitization

• Metadata cataloging

The UNLV Libraries Experience (continued)

• Training/experience in HTML coding

• State reclassification just finished; most jobs were reclassified

• Continuing education/training in progress

• Departmental name change/job title changes

• For the first time in our history, instead of being on the back end of change, we can be on the front end, cutting edge, even the bleeding edge. We will not get this chance again.