Professional Development

Sunday at ALA was a busy day for me. It started off with me attending a program sponsored by the Anthropology and Sociology Section (ANSS) of ACRL titled “Chicago’s Ethnic Mosaic: Cultural Identity and Neighborhood Change”. Although I only stayed two of the four hours program, I heard and learned much on the history of European immigration and in-migration of African Americans and Mexican Americans to Chicago as well as the history of Chicago’s public housing.

Next, I went to the exhibits to attend Lauren Pressley’s book signing and to visit vendors’ booths to pick up any interesting free stuff. I stopped by the Library of Congress’ booth and picked up several informational booklets on MARC and FRBR records. Afterwards, I went to Au Bon Pain in the conference center to purchase something for lunch ($6 for a small bag of chips and a bottled water–outrageous) and spotted an escorted Judy Blume trying to make a decision about lunch. I loved her books as a young girl.

The afternoon session I attended was called “New Selectors and Selecting in New Subjects: Meeting the Challenges”. Linda Phillips, Head of Scholarly Communication at the University of Tennessee, began the panel session by likening selectors to entrepreneurs. We need to be client-centered in providing content and services to faculty and students. She said selectors must:

• approach collection development in a digital library framework
• take an active role in creating scholarly publications
• assert professional principles for free and unbiased access to knowledge
• understand and fully exploit the potential of the local and the immediate

She went on to say libraries need to complete the migration from print to electronic collections. Her library embarked on a reorganization where the emphasis is on liaisons and their academic departments, the expansion of unique local digital publications, and adding freely accessible web content to collection (e.g. Directory of Open Access Journals and OAIster). Her advice for new selectors is:

• learn the library’s explicit and implied collection policies and practices
• talk with colleagues
• know the library’s budget and expectations; understand recordkeeping and encumbrances/expenditures for accountability
• learn library’s strategy for managing cost increases
• get to know clietele (i.e. faculty) and their search preferences; build trust; collaborate with faculty–this is the key to enhancing research and instruction on campus
• get acquainted with vendor materials
• be knowledgeable in intellectual property issues, creative commons, SPARC, NIH open access–this will increase your credibility with scholars
• learn about your faculty’s discipline–how are they involving students
• participate in at least two disciplinary related programs each semester
• encourage researchers to consider open access publishing

Supervisors should lead discussions about research practices and discipline culture and encourage liaisons to include these things in yearly goals.

TRACE (Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange) is the University of Tennessee’s digital repository.

Arro Smith of the San Marcos Public Library spoke on and showed attendees resources on the ALCTS (Association for Library Collections and Technical Services) web site for new selectors. By clicking on “Conferences & Events” which appears on the lefthand side of the web page, one can discover webinars, workshops and web courses available. The Collection and Management and Development Section (CMDS) of ALCTS has recently started publishing a new series of monographs called the Sudden Selectors Guide and they are available through the ALA Store. These monographs are designed to address niche topics. Business resources is the only guide so far to be published. Mr. Smith said forthcoming discipline guides to be published include biology, English, art, chemistry and GLBITQ.

Next on the panel to speak was Jeff Kosokoff of Tufts University. He feels libraries shouldn’t take possession of things not needed. We should think about information in terms of having access not about having it sitting on shelves or owning it. Information, as a service, becomes ever more dominant from a user perspective and needs to be delivered in a way people would use it, otherwise it won’t be used.

My last session of the day was attending the Anthropology Librarians Discussion Group. At our meeting there was an Alexander Street Press representative who reported that the vendor is looking to develop a streaming video database of anthropology films that would be transcribed and text searchable. He was seeking input on what types of films should be included in the proposed database. One person suggested to the rep. that the product should be marketed to anthropology and area studies. Serials cancellations was another topic on the agenda. Several attendees said they were having to make decisions about cutting dual formats of journals and expressed concerns over how some electronic anthropological journals sometimes don’t contain illustrations that accompany the print format. From this discussion, I felt that Wake is ahead of the curve in eliminating dual formats of anthropological journal titles. I really enjoyed going to this session and talking with other anthropology librarians. I believe I was the only cataloger in the room.

On Monday, I attended “Resuscitating the Catalog: Next-Generation Strategies for Keeping the Catalog Relevant” which Kaeley has already summarized in her ALA Annual 2009 day 4 post. I also went to the ALCTS sponsored “President’s Program: Who owns Antiquity? Museums and the Battle over Our Ancient Heritage” in which James Cuno, Director of the Art Institute of Chicago, discussed whether museums should return ancient artifacts to their country of origin. Mr. Cuno has written and published a book with the same title as his talk. At the conclusion of his talk, it was time to make my way to O’Hare Airport to go home.

Redesigning Technical Services Workflows, Saturday morning, July 11, 2009:

Here are some brief highlights — please feel free to chat with me if you want to know more. Please note that these speakers are both from much larger libraries than ZSR.

Arlene Klair, Adaptive Cataloging & Database Mgmt Group Leader, University of Maryland Libraries

• Original catalogers now primarily work on high value gifts and special collections since implementing shelf ready with the main domestic book vendor.
• A product called OCLC Classify helps copy catalogers do “nasty cuttering” that was previously done by original catalogers. The product hyperlinks to other library catalogs that hold to the title to be able to see how they cuttered and then you can link to your own catalog to see how it fits your collection.
• They use Connexion for batch loading, using save files on a shared drive.
• They use a commercial service called Bibliographic Notification to upgrade bibs (especially CIP); an internal study conducted some time ago showed that the lag for the upgrades with this service was only about 3 months and Arlene suspects that now the lag might only be 2 months.

Rick Anderson, Associate Director for Scholarly Resources and Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah

Rick indicated immediately that he was repeating much of his earlier talks in other venues, but I thought it was worth hearing again because he’s making good points for consideration. You’ll notice that he frequently repeated a couple of themes:

There are 4 areas where “Technical Services needs retooling.”

1. Books
2. Serials
3. Cataloging
4. Collection Development

• Consolidation — put staff together for serials and monographs into one organizational unit [ZSR is already there in the sense he meant it.]
• Simplification [of processes] — use shelf-ready, don’t examine every book, duplicate call numbers don’t cause the patron to fail in retrieving the right book
• Simplification — drop check-in, binding, and claiming for print journals and focus on doing things that get the patron access when the patron needs it
• Outsourcing routine items and redirecting in-house catalogers to special items — Marriott Library has all monographic purchases shipped to OCLC first to be cataloged and to make them shelf-ready; catalogers at the library now spend time on the library’s own digital and special collections.
• Simplification — completeness and accuracy of the records in the OPAC is not the point; connection of the patron to the item is the point. The OPAC is now mainly the means of retrieving items instead of discovery. Look at your catalog logs and see if known item searches are the most frequent type of search
• Use patron-driven selection. “Patrons know; librarians guess.” We now have tools and ability to supply the patron needs quickly instead of having to guess ahead of time. Pay the $20 for overnight Fed Ex of the $18 book in Amazon that was requested by a patron instead of spending the money on things that will never circulate. Circulation rate is down 53% and reshelving is down 73% since 1997, at U. of Utah. 50% of librarian-selected titles never circulated. (This was calculated with student enrollment factored in.) Purchase ILL requests instead of borrowing the items. Buy on-demand (as with e-books). Marriott Library purchased an Espresso Book Machine to do print on demand (through Baker & Taylor’s Lightning Source) and patrons have the option to buy a print-on-demand item to keep or the library will add it to the collection.

ALCTS Governance

The majority of my conference was confined to ALCTS governance.

I participated in my last ALCTS Budget & Finance (B&F) meetings and related Continuing Resource Section Executive Committee meeting. I was required to resign from this early since I won the election for Chair of Acquisitions Section. It looks like ALCTS is on track to end the Fiscal Year in the black. Some good decisions to steer towards webinars and online continuing education courses (such as the Fundamentals of Acquisitions and the Fundamentals of Electronic Resource Acquisitions) are paying off. Final figures will be late due to ALA Annual Conference being later than usual, which leaves some degree of uncertainty, but at least the budget is on track at this point. B&F discussed how to determine pricing for the electronic version of Library Resources and Technical Services (aka LRTS, the research journal of ALCTS) - discussion to be continued with expertise from the LRTS board and the Continuing Resources Section.

At the request of the current leaders of Acquisitions Section (AS), I stepped in ahead of my assumption of duties as Vice Chair/Chair Elect of AS and helped run the All Committee meeting on Saturday afternoon. I learned that the section doesn’t have many long-timers who know the ropes right now and that many people need to be helped with understanding their roles within the section. I started talking with section members who aren’t currently involved, hoping to get a head start on the appointment process. Starting in the fall and continuing through March, I’ll be learning where committee vacancies are and making appointments.

Big changes are happening in the Association of Library Collections and Technical Services (ALCTS) Division of ALA. ALCTS is introducing a New Members Interest Group for those who have been members 5 years or less to have an opportunity to learn more about participation in ALCTS. ALCTS will be doing strategic planning in synch with ALA and internally is interested in reorganizing to fit today’s needs. For example, there will now be a Continuing Education Committee (to instigate design of more courses like the Fundamentals of… mentioned above). These agenda items will impact the work in the individual sections in the coming year. For example, each section has an Education Committee that needs to realign it’s work to fit with having a Division-level Continuing Education Committee comprised of members-at-large instead of the chairs of the section committees. There was quite a bit of discussion about continuing to have a Midwinter Conference or not and the impacts if there were not a meeting in January.

Looks like I’m embarking on an interesting 3 year odyssey in the leadership of Acquisitions Section.