> My main issue however is with staffing. My staff has been here for many years
> and I find that some tasks relating to electronic resources involve too many
> different areas (acquisitions and serials for example) and it is hard to
> change the current culture, and job descriptions. I have not been successful
> perhaps breaking down some tasks sufficiently. Has anyone been successful in
> moving staff to this new environment?

This is a really tough problem -- for all of us, I think it's safe to say.
When we had to reorganize our Tech Services area, we took an interesting
approach that I think worked out pretty well.  Instead of starting out by
looking at individual people and their jobs, we (the managers and I) made a
list of all the things that we need to do in the area, and tried to
prioritize them.  Then we made a list of the people we had, and tried to
figure out how best to match their strengths to the most important,
high-impact tasks.  What I found interesting is that we basically tore
everything up and went through three or four fairly radical new
organizational structures before eventually landing on a structure that
actually looks pretty traditional.  But going through that process really
helped clarify our thinking about which tasks are most important to patron
service.

One barrier for many of us in making these changes is an unwillingness to
tell people that their jobs are going to have to change, sometimes in
dramatic ways.  Those conversations can be very, very difficult.  In my
experience, though, if you talk to people both publicly and privately about
the reasons for the changes ahead of time, and if you listen carefully and
respectfully when they raise concerns and demonstrate that you've taken
those concerns into account (whether or not you do exactly what the person
wanted), the results are much better than if you either a) try to make
everyone happy or b) simply railroad your decision through without getting
good input and listening to it.  (When I had to reorganize again because of
budget cuts and layoffs, the process was much less satisfactory because it
had to be carried out without all that good input from managers and staff.)

--
Rick Anderson
Assoc. Dir. for Scholarly Resources & Collections
Marriott Library
Univ. of Utah
rick.anderson@utah.edu
(801) 721-1687