The technical services workplace has become one of rolling change where a new service or product is barely in place before there is a need to accommodate still newer products or upgrades with their parallel demands on fiscal and personnel resources. (Gosling, 1991: 14)

Changes felt throughout technical services

Before technology transformed library materials themselves, it transformed how libraries did business. Library automation, or the creation of computer systems that could store records for library materials, and integrated library systems (ILS) transformed the nature of library technical services by revealing the connections between budgets, library materials and circulation statistics. The card catalog was phased out, as were separate systems such as circulation cards and paper-based bookkeeping, and the relationships among the units of the library became much more visible. The daily work of every person in technical services changed dramatically.

Although the effects of electronic resources as an emerging format have not yet been felt by every person in technical services, they have had a general effect on each of its areas. For cataloging, metadata standards diversified and catalogers no longer had the luxury of working on records one by one, trying to create the both sought-after and maligned “perfect record”. Karen Calhoun (2003: 284) noted, “In the area of data management, the key trend driving all others is the shift from data entry – that is, working on records one by one – to data manipulation – that is, working on batches of records at once.” Like the change to an automated work process, this shift could be a stressful experience. As Bradford Eden (1999: 291) wrote, “For catalogers, the idea of learning multiple metadata standards in this new and wonderful age of electronic resources is daunting if not impossible.”

Acquisitions also felt the change in format. If acquisitions took on licensing, this was a new skill set to develop and work that could take significant time for a high-level person. Negotiation took on more complexity, as e-journals could be bundled, digital collections could have deep discounts for vendors at certain times of the year and prices could be set at lower rates if multiple-year contracts were signed. The new process lacked the clarity of workflow that was available with physical formats – bibliographic records were not always available or appropriate as access points, and “receiving” an item took on a whole new meaning. Some of the e-formats that are now seen as more transitional, such as CD-ROM and terminal-based e-resources, also required management of the physical material and collaboration with library systems departments to manage the supporting hardware and software.

Perhaps most affected was the area of serials. E-journals and abstracting and indexing databases were the first widely accepted online electronic formats, and due to the digital nature of the formats, entire new workflows and skills based on new technologies were needed. There were trials to set up, resources to activate with the vendors and interfaces to attend to, as well as patron support and troubleshooting access issues for all these new resources. The new functions required many library workers to learn new systems and new skills rapidly.

Although the conceptual changes were significant, at most libraries electronic resources have actually transformed the work of only a few people, often isolating workers who had been in units that supported physical formats in a new electronic resources unit. Eventually, however, electronic resources will represent an even greater change than automation because they will affect the workflow of the library staff, the means of access by the user, the acquisition models that are possible and the nature of resource description. It is increasingly important that libraries acknowledge the effect of electronic resources and facilitate the end result, where all technical services personnel are versed in the systems, skills and concepts of a cyclical workflow dominated by electronic formats.

From ownership to access

Besides a similar scope of effect, there are other interesting connections between automation and electronic resources, such as a shift in the role of the library from content owner to access point. Library automation contributed to this by facilitating the connection of libraries to one another. As stated by Irene P. Godden (1991: 3):

It became possible to know other libraries’ holdings with quick searches, increasing the user’s view of available resources but also the ability for libraries to borrow from one another more efficiently and effectively. Libraries could buy core collections that were directly relevant to their user populations (or as much as they could afford) and supplement these with materials from other libraries.

Electronic resources have taken this trend of ownership to access even further. Aggregated collections of e-journals helped make libraries comfortable with the shifting nature of digital content, and new acquisition models such as patron-driven e-book plans and pay-per-view article systems have taken the library from a “just-in-case” to a “just-in-time” model of collection development. Not only can libraries rely on other libraries’ collections to supplement their own by using automation, but they can rely on flexible delivery models for all types of materials direct from content producers as well.

This shift from ownership to access has redefined the work of technical services. Serials budgets need to be more nimble, such as breaking up the “Big Deals” previously so common in the e-journal world so that items can be more easily cancelled. The same is true for book budgets. If libraries want to support a new model of acquisition, such as a patron-driven e-book plan, they may need to scale back their approval plan profiles so they can redirect money to the new model. The entire model of budget allocation can shift, even from something as straightforward as estimating future costs based on previous expenditures, when new models usher in fundamental collecting shifts.

An emphasis on access creates a deeper connection between technical services and patrons, and staff must rely more on usage analysis, patron requests and qualitative analysis, such as through LibQUAL +, to get users what they need when they need it. There is also an increased reliance on technologies outside the ILS, such as OpenURL resolvers, to facilitate third-party services like the Copyright Clearance Center’s Get It Now article delivery service or publisher-direct document delivery and pay-per-view services.

A focus on access thereby deepens the connections between the traditional library units and electronic resource management because everyone involved needs to understand digital rights management (DRM) and licensing restrictions. Document delivery agreements, for example, can be complex, perhaps representing only a subset of a publisher's offerings or having a choice between unmediated or mediated delivery. Those involved in both technical and public services need to understand the access parameters explicitly based on the license agreement so they can manage the service effectively and explain it to users.

Blurring technical and public services

Just as with the shift from ownership to access, library automation and electronic resources share a decrease in the conceptual gap between technical services and enhancement of the user experience. With automation, the unified database of the integrated library system that connected the functions of acquisitions, cataloging and circulation led some libraries to consider circulation services to be part of technical services (Manning, 1991: 21). There were also new connections seen with reference units as ILS complete with online public access catalogs (OPACs) made acquisitions and availability data immediately available to patrons and public services staff. According to Sharon L. Walbridge (1991: 64), “It is clear that those who build the OPAC – the catalogers – and those who interpret it – the reference staff – would benefit by increased dialogue. No longer can the catalogers make decisions and do their work in an isolated fashion.” This sometimes led to the suggestion that the new connection required a new staffing structure: “Libraries must abandon the conventional library organization chart, which neatly divides public and technical services. That model is inadequate in an interdisciplinary and interorganizational information world” (Hirshon, 1991: 50).

As will be explored more in Chapter 2, with electronic resources management (ERM), which involves linking among resources as well as discovery that increasingly represents all that a library provides, that gap closes even further than it did for automation. Now that cloud-based systems are on the rise, emerging strongly in the discovery environment, there is no longer a systems intermediary between the technical services librarian and the user interface. Changes made with the collection have an instant and direct impact on the user experience.

This focus on the user experience is one of the greatest areas of innovation available to libraries today. Developing a better picture of user preferences and identifying areas of user frustration through assessment, then using collections infrastructure, data management and interface adjustments to improve the user experience, are endeavors in which technical and public services have a shared role.

Automation as a trigger for downsizing

As convincing as they were conceptually, shifts in the perception of the work and nature of technical services tied to automation were rarely reflected in organizational change in libraries. Arnold Hirshon (ibid.: 51) showed “typical” technical services organizational charts from 1975 and 1991, and they were identical. One exception was the merging of acquisitions and cataloging functions. In some libraries, copy cataloging began to happen at the point of receipt within acquisitions units, and management of the bibliographic database was often split within the organization from the initial loading and editing of records.

Generally, though, the structure of acquisitions, cataloging and serials remained stable through the developing years of library automation. This is likely because, even with the perceived blurring with public services (both access and reference), the general workflow of technical services had not changed. Put simply, the structure worked. It was still a linear process, the steps of which were triggered by a physical item passing from department to department. Leslie A. Manning (1991: 11–12) wrote during this peak time of change for library automation:

Although the structure often remained the same, automation did bring a significant organizational change to technical services – the loss of positions. It became easy to obtain records for materials that would have had to be cataloged in the pre-automated library, and the need to maintain physical files for budget or transaction work went down dramatically. In the interest of efficiency and demands from other areas of the library, many libraries cut technical services positions or did not fill vacancies.

Lost opportunities

Because of this perception of technology as a creator of simpler work and efficiency, library automation put technical services at risk, or at least the people who worked in them. Some authors, such as Karen Horny (1991: 50), tried to defend the need for technical services librarians: “The administrative skills and specialized expertise which have long characterized professional work in technical services remain essential in coping with new automation-related possibilities.” But others, such as Delmus E. Williams (1991: 30–1), emphasized a decreased need for technical services librarians in the new technological environment: “Investments in technology must be seen as alternatives to investments in personnel costs” and “managers are continually looking for opportunities to reallocate resources to meet new demands for service, and technical services will continually be asked to provide some of those resources”.

This loss of staff from technical services represented lost opportunities. With automation, many people thought that fewer staff were needed to do the work of technical services, and that may have been true with some responsibilities, but the work also became more complex and required additional library staff with more sophisticated and technologically oriented skill sets. Libraries ended up taking a back seat in critical fields such as information retrieval, as discussed more in Chapter 4, and lost their users to other more convenient, easy-to-use search and discovery technologies.

Organizational change as a mark of innovation

Organizational change, as it reflects the relationships between jobs or the creation of jobs that are so different from previous ones that the status quo is unsustainable, has direct ties to innovation, such as the creation of new and better services. It is often difficult for organizations to change reporting lines and individuals’ responsibilities due to training and personnel-related burdens. This is particularly true in libraries, which are historically people-centric institutions that will more often adapt the work to fit the existing worker than demand that the worker change to fit the work. Technical services, in particular, require incredibly detailed work that is difficult to untangle and rearrange among new people, structures and workflows, and it takes a visionary approach along with a great deal of time and effort to make significant changes.

In this context, electronic resources have elicited more organizational change and therefore likely more innovation than library automation. Although change was and still is slow, electronic resources have created at least some organizational change in many if not most academic libraries. This change can be seen as three waves, one of which has yet to take place. When electronic resources were emerging – the first wave – only a few libraries responded with organizational change. The work related to print did not go away, so finding staff bandwidth was difficult, and it took libraries comfortable with change and eager to be innovative to shift the organization to accommodate this new format. In the second wave, where libraries currently find themselves, electronic resources are the dominant format and represent the majority of the materials budget. Many libraries have been forced to change, with the creation of stand-alone electronic resources units or at least new electronic resources positions.

However, as outlined below, even this second wave is a transitional stage and remains far from a unified structure that would represent the actual needs and interrelated nature of general resources management for all formats. Libraries are now entering a third wave of organizational change, predicted to be a true integration of workflows for all formats in technical services. As explored in Chapter 3, next-generation library systems are emerging from the needs of electronic resources to accommodate new and traditional formats and services. As such, new organizational structures are needed. An important aspect of this current transition is to approach organizational change proactively with an eye toward creating an innovative environment instead of repeating the experience of automation, which resulted in downsizing and lost opportunities.

The first wave: accommodating electronic resources in a print-centric structure

Much like automation, in the early days of electronic resources libraries were reluctant to change and only a few jumped ahead to new organizational structures. The University of Nevada in Las Vegas in the mid-1990s, for example, formed a new department, Knowledge Access Management. This included the areas of cataloging, library systems and web development (Eden, 1999: 293), merging the public view with the back-end view through the same personnel. This highlighted the reality of electronic resources work – it extended into discoverability, managing many systems that needed to be seamlessly integrated, and usability and programming – as well as the general increased technological awareness and skills of library personnel, but it was a bold step that was not widely replicated.

Some libraries took a more iterative structural approach to accommodating these new resources. At Cornell University in 2002, for example, Central Technical Services was reorganized to include a new metadata services group and merge acquisitions and bibliographic control, with electronic resources as a unit under acquisitions and bibliographic control (Calhoun, 2003: 286–7). It is interesting, though, that even in this new structure metadata was on its own, separate from work with MARC (Machine-Readable Cataloging), and electronic resources were separate from subscription maintenance. It appears that support for electronic resources, even with reorganization, still had a much smaller footprint than support for other resources, primarily print. In writing about this reorganization, Calhoun (ibid.: 287) does acknowledge that it was an “intermediate state” on the way toward full integration of ERM and access.

This kind of adjustment was not unique to the United States, although in other parts of the world the team approach to organizational structure often dominated the conversation. As Morgan and Atkinson (2000) noted in an article about current trends in academic libraries in the

United Kingdom, “Some of the traditional hierarchical staffing structures are no longer appropriate, given the need for flexibility, more project and team working and our near-obsessional refocusing on the customer/user.” Similarly, Tam and Robertson (2002: 374) of the University of Hong Kong Libraries noted:

Overall, although there were exceptions, many libraries, likely even most, made no changes to their organizational structures in the first years of the growth of this new format. Typically, new responsibilities, such as negotiating licenses, managing knowledge bases or activating resources with vendors, were added on to existing jobs in the technical services structure. This is not surprising, as the phenomenal, rapid growth of this format exceeded the boundaries of many people's expectations, but it was especially challenging in that all of this new work was taken in the context of often severely diminished staffing in technical services due to automation. Electronic resource expenditures and collections grew, often quickly, but the staffing rarely grew with them.

An article written by Bozena Bednarek-Michalska (2002) about the development of a job description for an electronic resources librarian in Poland clearly reveals the struggles of libraries across the world in accommodating these new responsibilities. As described by the author, librarians in various departments had simply absorbed portions of the responsibilities for electronic resources, so the need for a new position was clear, but where to put this position was a difficult issue – acquisitions, serials, reference and special/subject-based collections were all under consideration. Equally difficult was what responsibilities this post should have. The position was eventually assigned acquisition, resource management, preservation and collection development responsibilities, with an emphasis on acquisition and budgeting issues, but it could have gone many different ways.

The second wave: reorganizing to support the growth of electronic resources

As electronic resources overtook print as the dominant format, at least for serials, the pressure for libraries to change increased. Throughout the first decade of the twenty-first century, many libraries created new positions to focus specifically on electronic resources, or reorganized to account for the shift from print and other physical formats.

A general theme of many of these reorganizations, or at least in the discussions about the need for reorganization, was the blending of the formerly distinct public and technical services, which had often been discussed in the automation of library services but reached new heights with the introduction of the electronic format. As stated by Burke and McConnell (2007: 58), “Gone are the days of the ‘us’ and ‘them’ mentality of technical services and public services. Roles now overlap.” An example of this blending was Lehigh University, which “formed an electronic journals and resources committee to promote collaboration within the library” (Wiles-Young et al., 2007: 254). The committee's membership represented collection development, acquisitions, serials and access services – a fairly full spectrum of groups affected by the transition to electronic resources. It included a member who demonstrated well the high level of blending that could take place: a science librarian who, in addition to subject-specific responsibilities, was the library's OpenURL resolver administrator. A different version of this blending of public and technical services took place at Texas A&M University:

Sometimes libraries went to the extreme of putting a fully public services focus on electronic resources. At Bowling Green State University, for example, a newly created electronic resources librarian position was designed specifically to “address public service, rather than technical services issues” (Kerr, 2010: 299).

Another focus of library technical services reorganizations was on the formats themselves. At the University of New South Wales in Australia, for example, between 2004 and 2006 the library’s technical services structure was reorganized from a traditional monographic/serials division to a new three-unit division split into format and support services: electronic resources, physical resources and vendor and finance services. This included shifting personnel from print to electronic materials and the new work required for these materials, such as licensing (Wells, 2007). At Northwestern University Library, the most controversial component of a 2007 reorganization of technical services was the splitting of print serials from electronic serials; but in the end the newly formed Electronic Resources and Collection Assessment Department was only responsible for electronic journals and databases instead of all serials, and the print serials work was merged with print monographic work in the reorganized Acquisitions and Rapid Cataloging Department (Sellberg, 2008).

However it was done, growth in the personnel time spent on electronic resources was necessary for almost all libraries. For those that could afford and/or accommodate it, this change could be significant. Bowling Green State University, for example, added not only a new position of electronic resources librarian, but the number of staff helping with electronic resources grew from two-and-a-half to six (Kerr, 2010). The increase in emphasis on electronic resources could also be seen at the level of the head of technical services. Zhu (2009) tracked changes in administrators’ expectations for head of technical services posts from 1996–1998 to 2006–2008 through a comparison of position postings from these years; management responsibilities for electronic resources were only mentioned in 1.59 per cent of postings in 1996–1998, whereas in 2006–2008 the rate had risen to 19.15 per cent.

In essence, electronic resources work appeared all across the library and led to a wider array of organizational structures within technical services than there was previously. Some individual libraries perceived electronic resources as being primarily associated with new technology, access and discoverability; others associated it with backend responsibilities such as budgeting issues and licensing; and many continued to try to shoehorn the workflows associated with these resources into the existing structure, with the result that the personnel associated with this work have ended up across the spectrum of traditional functions within the library. Local aptitude and interest added to this effect. A combination of tight budgets and low turnover can easily create a situation where a new responsibility goes to a certain person or unit simply because there is willingness or a staff opening.

Beginnings of the third wave: holistic electronic resource management

Likely because electronic resources were new and more complex to manage than physical resources, with electronic resource unit members being required to learn many new library systems, the functions related to these resources often extended outside the boundaries of technical services. In many libraries, electronic resource units’ responsibilities have gradually grown to encompass parts of the areas of collection development, systems and access services.

Collection development units, for example, are traditionally where usage of the library collection is tracked and analyzed. Usage data for physical formats were relatively easy to collect, as most of them would be from the circulation module of the ILS, and had an intuitive interpretation. Electronic collections analysis, however, requires a great deal more effort and knowledge of usage standards based on new metrics that are different from traditional circulation standards. To create a picture of the usage of its electronic collections, the library must obtain data loads from multiple vendors, clean up and quality check the data, and understand relationships between the various usage components. As electronic resource unit members are the ones versed in the electronic resource management systems and the primary contact to the vendors, the steps of collecting, loading, standardizing and interpreting the usage data have often stayed within the unit, although the numbers are ultimately provided to collection development units for the decision to continue or cancel resources.

Another area in which the lines are blurring is between systems and electronic resources units. As library systems become purely web-based with no need for local hosting, work related to the systems becomes ensuring interoperability, moving data, understanding interfaces and how users interact with systems, and connecting with the users where they are, which is not necessarily at the library. It is no longer about the hardware or the on-site programming needed to make the systems run. And because it is the electronic resources units that work most closely with the systems that support the electronic collection, they have taken on responsibilities that are more like those of traditional systems units.

The area of the greatest cross-over, however, is between ERM and access services. The responsibilities of the units, although still largely split by format type, are similar due to the broader focus of access to information. Access services units help search for books identified by patrons as lost, and electronic resources units work to fix bad links identified by patrons. Access services units arrange and manage the resources within the physical stacks, and electronic resources units arrange and manage electronic resources within the library website, catalog and other systems. Both ERM and access services, because they work with the library systems and patrons, could fit in either the larger technical or public services.

Learning from library automation

Automation resulted in a general downsizing of technical services because the addition of technology was seen primarily as making the work of libraries more efficient. Because the addition of technology did not translate into a proactive approach of retraining staff to have higher-level skills, libraries lost significant opportunities that led to the dominance of commercial entities in a space that had historically been the domain of libraries – providing access to information resources.

The introduction of electronic resources to libraries is similar to automation in many ways, and this puts it at the same risk of downsizing. As on-site print collections decrease, hosted library services increase and patron-driven models take an increasing portion of the materials budget, administrators’ eyes will inevitably turn to the personnel who once supported print collections and services. Due to the expanded responsibilities electronic resources units have in the areas of collection development, systems and access services, the risk of not addressing the challenges is greater than it was at the time of automation.

This risk is also present for current electronic resource management work. The systems used to support this work are developing quickly and, much like automation, can take care of a great deal of effort that used to be borne by local staff. If a library subscribes to a usage statistic compilation service, consolidates services to fewer knowledge bases or uses an ERMS (electronic resource management system) to replace a manually maintained journal A–Z list, for example, the library has two choices: it can say that it has no need for the staff who used to handle that work, or it can adjust the work of those staff to a relevant, higher-level skill set such as assessment of usage statistics, data management or interface design.

The role of sharing

Both in terms of economic reality for many libraries and in the general interest of achieving more together, many librarians are discussing the need to pool libraries’ expertise and staff time in order to succeed in the current financial and information environments. The University of California Libraries Bibliographic Services Task Force (2005: 9) report puts it bluntly: “The time and energy required to do Library business is unsustainable”, citing the problems of duplicated work and the inability to share records across the many databases within the University of California Libraries system.

These pressures create the potential for the consolidation of technical services among neighboring or consortial institutions. The increased collaboration between some of the technical services functions of Cornell and Columbia Universities through the 2CUL project may prove to be a successful approach. Because the institutions are four hours apart and have separate library systems, there is an initial emphasis on sharing expertise, such as the skills of a bibliographer for Slavic resources or cataloger of Korean resources, but it is envisioned that when the institutions move to a web-scale resource management system, they will migrate together. Also, because electronic resources are free of physical format concerns, it is believed there are even greater opportunities for collaboration with this format. There are certainly challenges in this approach, such as the disconnection of staff from one another, technical difficulties and organizational, structural and cultural differences between the institutions, but this project represents a model that libraries might find appealing (Wicks and Wolven, 2011).

The trends related to sharing are also present for libraries’ collections. As Calhoun (2006: 15) said, “A lot of funds are currently locked up in building many parallel, redundant research library collections”, and “With respect to building cooperative cataloging and resource sharing systems with a national or international reach [research libraries] have been reasonably successful; with respect to collaborative collection development or other kinds of shared services, less so” (ibid.: 44). If this was difficult with print, electronic resources add further layers of complexity with licensing, digital rights management and diverse acquisitions strategies such as leasing or patron-driven plans.

Part of sharing inevitably involves letting go of local control. As Zhu (2010: 129) said, “To respond to the new network-level cataloging environment, it is important for cataloging to forego [sic] its traditional notion that [a] library catalog is a local database that should be under local control.” The benefits of letting go of control of the local catalog can be great, however, as staff time can be freed up for providing access routes to archival, local and special collections or further advancements in discovery tools and metadata. Similarly, if sharing technical services can generate workflow efficiencies, this approach could allow for increased investment of staff time in work such as assessment and usability testing that is often currently sidelined by the time demands of the traditional technical services responsibilities in libraries.

The third wave: new organizational models

There are a number of ways that new organizational models could take shape, largely due to the variety of connections that electronic resources and their associated services create across the traditional library unit boundaries. As many traditional library functions still have relevance in the new electronic-dominant environment, it is a question of recognizing the tipping point at which change is truly needed. The library will still need people to buy items and manage a budget, for example, so the function of acquisitions needs to be present, but the appropriate staffing and placement of this unit, such as in technical services or access services, depend largely on the degree of “just-in-time” and unmediated purchasing that a library does. Similarly, the library will still need people to work with metadata, but the balance between more traditional responsibilities such as original cataloging and newer responsibilities such as batch processing and working in knowledge bases may cause the function of cataloging to swing more toward either technical services or library systems.

Some of the most dynamic potential new organizational models lie in a shift of responsibilities for access services. Access services staff presence is weighted on the print format side, largely because books make up the largest physical footprint in libraries even though the majority of acquisitions are electronic. As physical collections are moved out and/or discarded, there will be an opportunity to redefine what it means to help users gain stable and clear access to a library’s collections. Many libraries currently only provide help during business hours and no in-person support for troubleshooting electronic access issues, for example – much less than is traditionally provided for the print collection. If access services for the print collection is stack maintenance and borrowing, access services for the electronic collection should be troubleshooting support, website maintenance and usability testing. Bringing patron online access issues to the larger public services side of the library could be a sustainable service feature for libraries.

Writers in the field of access services seem to agree with this conclusion. As noted by Thomas Schneiter (2002: 218):

The same argument being made here for technical services, that the work is more complex, not less, has also been made for access services by Deborah Carver (2010: 78–9):

The tie to ERM work is clear in Carver’s (ibid.: 82–3) predictions for future roles for access services, which include an expanded role in the assessment of usage statistics, investigation of new information technologies and evaluating and responding to the changing needs of library patrons.

Another option for a new organizational structure lies in the diversity of electronic resources. With the growth of new formats, such as streaming media and datasets, there is an opportunity for deep specialization within technical services, possibly even a restructuring along e-format lines within a unified model, such as currently occurs with special standing orders, media or local collections. The current model is one that often lumps all electronic resources together, but different kinds of resources require different knowledge and skills. This might open the door to a more holistic approach to help merge public and technical services. A data unit, for example, could be responsible for licensing, acquiring, describing and enabling access to datasets as well as helping patrons find, clean, reformat and possibly analyze the data.

The shifting dynamics of where usage assessment takes place and the balance between “just-in-case” versus “just-in-time” collecting need to be resolved. This could result in a full merger of collection development and technical services, with collection development work highlighted by data management and licensing concerns and liaison work pushed further toward reference and instruction responsibilities. Writers in collection development literature such as Jonathan Nabe also feel organizational change is necessary. Having seen little adjustment in the typical organizational structure of collection development librarians and liaisons between two surveys of Association of Research Libraries institutions, one completed in 1987 and one in 2007, in what was otherwise a time of great change for collection development practices, Nabe (2010: 12) made a strong case for reconsidering current staffing structures and responsibilities. As with technical services, the consequences of lost opportunities may be great. “If collection management is to be more than a sad relic of the past or a reactive function with a declining future, some leadership and broad oversight is required.”

There is also the continuing blurring of roles between technical services and library systems. As more products are released in the software-as-a-service model, there will be less and less need for hardware maintenance and upgrades to library systems. Instead, library systems and technical services will share a focus on data management, such as working with enterprise systems and streamlining the metadata demands of running a discovery system. As libraries move toward cloud computing, privacy issues increase because patron data are housed by a third party. Because of this, collaboration among technical services, library systems, campus IT and access services, the traditional maintainer of patron data, will most likely increase. There is also the potential for libraries to store digital items and serve them up to users, as has been done by a few institutions such as OhioLINK, bringing electronic preservation and digital migration issues back into libraries. These new and stronger connections across the library may result in a full merger between technical services and library systems.

Implicit in a number of these models is a general theme: a bifurcated print and electronic technical services workflow is not sustainable. Books and media have been slower to convert to digital formats than journals, but as e-readers and other portable devices become more common and better suited to the academic environment, e-books will gain prominence as a format. In addition, streaming media are already in a rapid stage of growth. These format trends, coupled with a new library-systems-in-a-cloud computing environment, will finally unify the currently separate workflows.

There are hints of this unified approach emerging within libraries in recent years. At the University of Northern Colorado, for example, the traditional departments of acquisitions, cataloging and serials/electronic resources were changed to departments that represent the timeline of resource acquisition and access:

Preparing for the third wave

To help libraries transition to an organizational structure that speaks to all formats effectively, it will be important for all library staff to become familiar with the concepts of ERM. Here are a few suggested ways that this may be done.

In essence, the isolated nature of electronic resources work needs to give way to greater sharing so that technical services work once again speaks to all the formats available. The connections of electronic resources work to the rest of the library need to be acknowledged either structurally or through a different approach, such as a focus on project teams. Web-scale library management systems might be what is needed to create these unified technical services departments again, and if this means peeling off the access and public services functions of ERM, libraries will need to ensure that the staff who take on these responsibilities are trained in the systems and concepts of electronic resources.

The hope is that, this time, staff will not significantly decrease as with automation, and libraries, as well as the institutions and user populations they serve, will see opportunities for innovation instead of for cost savings. The future of libraries lies in deeper assessment and data analysis, creating library services that keep pace with developments in commercial technology and developing true intelligent business processes that respond to users’ needs and preferences. Proactively retraining staff and repositioning them in new organizational models that fit holistic collections and associated services will help ensure libraries’ continued relevance in the information environment.

Case studies

References