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

Library?

Sharon Wiles-YoungDirector of Library Access Services

ALCTS- Heads of Cataloging Interest GroupALA Midwinter

January 23, 2012

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

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.

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

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”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?