ALCTS Role of the Professional Librarian in Technical Services Interest Group (RPLTS)

Saturday, January 26, 2013, 10:30-11:30

Renaissance Seattle Hotel, Municipal Room

Add this event to your Midwinter schedule: http://alamw13.ala.org/node/9036

 

Please join the RPLTS Interest Group for the following two presentations:

Impact of library-wide reorganization on Technical Services at the University of Notre Dame Hesburgh Libraries

 

Anastasia Guimaraes, Head, Metadata Services/Batchprocessing & Data Support units, University of Notre Dame Hesburgh Libraries

Andrea Langhurst, Head, Electronic Resources & Acquisitions Pay unit, University of Notre Dame Hesburgh Libraries

 

Hesburgh Libraries at the University of Notre Dame have been experiencing organizational transition over a number of years – starting with the departure of a long-serving Director of Libraries in early 2010, through transitions including introduction of a new University Librarian and a university-wide early retirement offering, and culminating in a library-wide reorganization with detailed reporting lines and structure just announced mid-September 2012.  During this presentation, we would share observations on how transition and reorganization affected us as professional librarians and impacted areas of technical services such as Acquisitions, Electronic Resources, Cataloging & Metadata, and Licensing – consolidating areas which had fallen within as many as 5 different departments over recent years into one large program area that now includes more than 40 library staff and faculty.  Discussing impact on:

 

*Current and former roles of technical services librarians within the organization

*Internal communications – integrating formerly independent departments to work differently as part of a larger program

*Partnership observations within the larger organization

*Staffing: new roles/new people/new tasks

*Challenges and Opportunities of leadership – supervising professional and para-professional staff in a changing environment

*Approaching training opportunities in a new environment

 

Retooling, Reskilling, RDA

 

Roman S. Panchyshyn, Catalog Librarian & Assistant Professor, Kent State University

 

This presentation will focus on the transformation currently taking place with professional librarians in Technical Services at Kent State University Libraries. 1) Professional librarians have actively played a role in bringing certain workflow processes back into the department. We have taken over many of the functions that were previously done by systems staff, especially in the area of electronic resource cataloging, batch cataloging and management. Professional librarians have undergone an active reskilling process to help bring new skills into the department. This reskilling process is impacting paraprofessional staff as well, since more departmental resources, and budget dollars need to be applied to electronic resource management workflows. 2) The role of the professional librarian as teacher is becoming more prominent and crucial, especially with RDA adoption and training. It is the professional librarian’s role to establish levels of competency and develop procedures for both paraprofessional staff and student assistants. 3) Kent State University Libraries is now a Tier 1 library in the OhioLINK consortium regarding cataloging and maintenance of bibliographic records in the OhioLINK central catalog; our records are prominently visible statewide. Professional librarians are being asked, more than ever, to take leadership roles in both OhioLINK and in the state. By assuming these leadership roles, it insures that technical services librarians are present “at the table” when administrative decisions are made, at both local and consortial levels, that impact the future roles of the department and its staff.

Allison Yanos and Charles McElroy, RPLTS IG Co-Chairs
Betsy Appleton and Stephanie Gehring, RPLTS IG Co-Chairs Elect