Cataloging and Metadata Commons^™

Telling The Technical Services Story: Communicating Value (Presentation), Rebecca Mugridge

University Libraries Faculty Scholarship

Technical Services isn’t the hidden discipline it once was. Despite some cross-departmental interaction, misconceptions about the work are all too common. It’s incumbent on technical services staff to take a proactive approach by communicating to others their value to the library and institutional mission. This session spotlights successful initiatives and gives you the guidance to bolster communication within departments, across the library, and campus-wide.

Tackling The 3 P'S In An Lsp Migration: Policies, Procedures, And (Best) Practices For Technical Services, Alie Visser, Christina Zoricic, Annabelle Drobniak

Western Libraries Presentations

This session reviews an approach to refreshing policies, procedures, and practices following a migration to a library services platform (LSP). Using a method of intensive collaboration, we revised and developed new workflows to optimize consortial and international standards while evaluating and updating local policies and procedures with a critical eye. We designed templates and procedures incorporating standards established by Collaborative Futures partners, and including other international standards, such as CONSER, RDA, BIBCO and PCC.

Digging The Issues And Concerns In Subject Access Towards Discoverability Of Information And Resources, David A. Cabonero, Judy Ann P. Jandoc, Jeazel T. Cabalo, Wina B. Dominguez

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

There is an information explosion in this computer age due to the rapid developments of information and communications technology. As a result, research and studies are quickly published because of faster printing and open access publishing. With these, access to information and resources is somewhat compromised. Without access, these collections are meaningless to educators, researchers, scholars, and other information users. Thus, this study prompted to determine the: 1) level of familiarity in the fundamental principles of subject cataloging; 2) level of usage familiarity of: a) grammar and code of relationships, b) types of subject headings and subdivisions, and c) authority …

Top 5 Ts-Centric Webinar & Virtual Conference Highlights, Rachel S. Evans

Articles, Chapters and Online Publications

The increase of wonderful, FREE programming being delivered virtually right now and available to audiences around the world is truly amazing. It can be overwhelming to sift through the options (especially if your inbox has exponentially exploded as mine has over the past 3 months). Take a trip back in time with me as I share below my favorite sessions that I feel offered the most valuable content to those of us in technical services positions.

TechScans is a blog to share the latest trends and technology tools for technical services law librarians. The official blog of the TS-SIS and …

Power Projects For Quarantined Librarians, Rachel S. Evans

Articles, Chapters and Online Publications

Some of us are approaching the two month mark of our library's closure to the public. Though it has definitely had ups and downs, I have found it has helped me better carve out time for professional development activities, dedicate more of my day to clean-up projects I have just not had time to follow through on, and even start new projects with the help of colleagues who found themselves needing a little more to do from home. I hope this post will elaborate on that topic to give specific project examples for those working in collection services, technical services, …

Richardson Collection Of Toy And Movable Books, Cindy Cline, Katie Caton, Alyssa Coon

Library Presentations

This presentation will focus on the Richardson Collection of Movable Books, including: what are movable books, how is the collection processed, and review different fields in the bibliographical records. We will also provide a preview of our new LibGuide for the collection.

Apps For Actionable Workflows: Tools To Stay In The Loop And On Top Of Tasks, Rachel S. Evans

Presentations

No matter what member of the team you are or what type of library you are in - be it electronic resources manager, cataloger, head of acquisitions, ILS or systems administrator, or even repository coordinator - getting things done and meeting goals depends largely on how you communicate with one another and how you handle your time. Meeting goals and deadlines on both big and small projects in addition to your personal tasks can be achieved less painfully by making effective use of a few on point tools. This session will use the presenter's preferred platforms to show specific examples …

Diversity, Inclusion, And Social Justice In Library Technical Services, Rhonda Kauffman, Martina S. Anderson

Published Works

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Libraries recently embraced a large-scale initiative to incorporate the values of diversity, inclusion, and social justice (DISJ) into library practices. In early 2017, the MIT collections directorate task force on DISJ released a report with recommendations for embedding DISJ values into the daily work of archives, technical services, preservation, scholarly communications, and collections strategy staff. This chapter focuses on the challenges and opportunities in undertaking a sustained effort to achieve DISJ specifically within technical services. The authors highlight how technical services staff can use their unique position within libraries to dismantle existing structures of …

Conference Roundup: Workshop Report On Digitization For Small Institutions, Rachel S. Evans

Articles, Chapters and Online Publications

Evans reviews a recent Georgia Library Association (GLA) preconference workshop presented by the Digital Library of Georgia (DLG). Evans shares takeaways from the half-day experience including resources related to the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) and the Digital Library Foundation (DLF). The report also presents learning objective in the context of the author's own work responsibilities and details how they will be useful and relate to current projects. Topics discussed include metadata, digitization, archiving digital-born photographs, repository standards, cataloging standards, and more.

Technical Services Law Librarian (ISSN 0195-4857) is an official publication of the Technical Services Special Interest Section …

More Than Things, Scarlet Galvan

Scholarly Papers and Articles

The often invisible labor of serials, technical services, metadata, and electronic resources workers sits in the space between required and preferred, assessment and surveillance. Although libraries and information workers did not explicitly create the systems many of us live in, we are responsible for their everyday functioning. In many ways the narratives from technical services to the library are centered in objects: item counts, COUNTER stats, door counts, discovery, and other transactional data. And yet, we are stewards and maintainers, innovators and storytellers of the countless ways these objects are experienced. How can we help our colleagues understand the outreach …

Reflections From Calicon19: Two Best Sessions, Rachel S. Evans

Articles, Chapters and Online Publications

Rachel Evans summarizes the recent Computer Assisted Legal Education (CALI) conference held in Columbia, SC in June 2019. Specifically Evans reviews two sessions related to automating work in institutional repositories and using eResources for more affordable course materials.

TechScans is a blog to share the latest trends and technology tools for technical services law librarians. The official blog of the TS-SIS and OBS-SIS AALL groups.

Quick Question: What About Conferences?, Rachel S. Evans

Articles, Chapters and Online Publications

Rachel Evans targets other merging technical services librarians in this blog post for new members. The post shares personal experience with conferences and other advice as well as offers other members to contribute their own advice and memories in response.

TechScans is a blog to share the latest trends and technology tools for technical services law librarians. The official blog of the TS-SIS and OBS-SIS AALL groups.

Quick Question: What’S With All Those Acronyms?, Rachel S. Evans, Keelan Weber

Articles, Chapters and Online Publications

Rachel Evans and Keelan Weber break down the key acronyms and related terminology for other new technical services and online bibliographic services special interest section members in this blog post.

TechScans is a blog to share the latest trends and technology tools for technical services law librarians. The official blog of the TS-SIS and OBS-SIS AALL groups.

Benchmarking Vended Authority Control Practices In Arl Libraries (Presentation), Rebecca L. Mugridge, Nancy Poehlmann

University Libraries Faculty Scholarship

This presentation shares the results of a survey of ARL libraries on the use of vended authority control at their institutions.

Developing A Social Justice Mindset In Technical Services, Ione T. Damasco

Roesch Library Faculty Presentations

These days, the words "equity," "diversity," and "inclusion" are used throughout libraries. But what do people mean when they use these words? And how do these words manifest in library technical services work? In this talk, participants explored how they can give these words real power when they frame them within a social justice mindset. The program started with an understanding of who participants are as individuals and how they fit into larger systems and structures of societal oppression. They they explored together how their work in technical services can contribute to the dismantling of those systems to ensure a …

Advocating For Technical Services Through Assessment (Presentation), Rebecca L. Mugridge

University Libraries Faculty Scholarship

This presentation discusses how managers can advocate for technical services through a variety of assessment activities.

Benchmarking Vended Authority Control Practices In Arl Libraries, Rebecca Mugridge, Rebecca Nous, Nancy Poehlmann, Wendy West

University Libraries Faculty Scholarship

This article presents the results of a survey designed to benchmark the use of vendors to support authority control activities in Association of Research Libraries member libraries. Such activities include updating authority or bibliographic records, sourcing authority records, participation in cooperative cataloging efforts, and more. The survey investigated whether and how responding libraries used vendors to create and maintain an authority file and process current cataloging records. The survey gathered demographic and other information about the libraries, and the authors sought to identify trends and correlations between these and other factors.

Automating Knowledge Base Maintenance With Kbart Integration, Andrée Rathemacher

Technical Services Faculty Presentations

Slides from a "Lightning Talk" presentation given at the NETSL Annual Spring Conference in Worcester, MA, May 5, 2017.

Advocating For Technical Services: The Power Of Assessment (Presentation), Rebecca L. Mugridge

University Libraries Faculty Scholarship

This presentation reviews the many ways that assessment can be used to advocate for technical services within academic library settings.

Keeping Up With New Legal Titles, Patricia Alvayay

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

In this book review, Patty Alvayay discusses Rethinking Library Technical Services: Redefining Our Profession for the Future by Mary Beth Weber.

Online Bibliographies For Shared Discovery, Jessica Schomberg

Library Services Publications

A few years ago, I began investigating best practices in cataloging assessment. I started with a review of related literature to gather citations on the topic. As this work progressed, I found that researchers describe assessment, or pieces of assessment, using many different terms including evaluation, quality, workflow, cost, and production. They also write specifically about cataloging or broadly about technical services; of which cataloging or metadata is a part.

Common Cause: Using Assessment To Advocate For Technical Services (Presentation), Rebecca L. Mugridge

University Libraries Faculty Scholarship

This presentation demonstrates how assessment activities and results can serve as an advocacy tool for technical services divisions of libraries.

Internal Customer Service Assessment Of Cataloging, Acquisitions, And Library Systems [Presentation], Kate Latal, Rebecca L. Mugridge, Nancy M. Poehlmann, Wendy L. West

University Libraries Faculty Scholarship

The Technical Services and Library Systems Division of the University at Albany Libraries conducted an internal customer service survey to gauge customer satisfaction with its services. Survey results demonstrated that customer surveys are a valuable assessment tool. Technical services and library systems units should use this tool to identify whether customers are satisfied with the services provided, whether the services are still needed, whether additional services are needed, and more. This presentation provides an approach to conducting a customer service survey, an analysis of potential benefits, and a survey instrument that others could adapt to use in their own libraries.

Lc Subject Headings, Fast Headings, And Apps: Diversity Can Be Problematic In The 21st Century, Karen A. Nuckolls

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

In this chapter, the author discusses and evaluates the effort to study and update relevant ethnic, racial, and other diverse subject headings. This discussion includes the work of the Library of Congress and software vendors. The author encourages for the technical services community to develop, use, and change subject headings to accurately reflect society.

Assessment Strategies For Technical Services (Presentation), Rebecca L. Mugridge, Nancy M. Poehlmann

University Libraries Faculty Scholarship

This presentation describes a number of qualitative assessment practices that can help technical services managers assess their effectiveness. Strategies include process improvement initiatives, customer service surveys, focus groups, benchmarking, and more.

Technical Services And Library Systems Customer Service Assessment, Rebecca L. Mugridge, Nancy M. Poehlmann, Kate Latal, Wendy L. West, Michael J. Sweeney

University Libraries Faculty Scholarship

This survey instrument was developed to gauge internal customer satisfaction with the services offered by the University at Albany Libraries Technical Services and Library Systems Division.

Ready Or Not? : An Assessment Of Shelf-Ready Materials Management Practices In Us Academic Libraries, Natalia Tomlin, Irina Kandarasheva

Post Library Faculty Publications

This paper analyzes results of a survey on shelf-ready materials management and cataloging practices in US academic libraries with various collection sizes. The survey respondents consisted of managers and librarians in technical services operations. Survey questions addressed topics such as the volume of shelf-ready materials, perspectives on shelf-ready expansion, the effect of local cataloging practices on shelf-ready services, the amount of cataloging and processing errors, and quality control. The majority of participants were from small- and medium-size academic libraries, and print materials were the prevalent format for shelf-ready treatment. Two main reasons for shelf-ready implementation across libraries of all sizes …

Doing Things Differently In The Cloud: Streamlining Library Workflows To Maximize Efficiency, Vanessa A. Garofalo

Conference Proceedings

Libraries share many common challenges including ever more complex collections, systems, and workflows, as well as increased user demand. To help manage these challenges, today’s cloud-based library management services are offering workflows that save library staff time and discovery solutions that meet users’ needs. Libraries using these services are seeing drastic reductions in the time it takes to perform routine tasks because of the integration between libraries, applications, partners, and data.

As a result of doing things differently, libraries save staff time and money while streamlining workflows and improving efficiency. In short, cloud-based library management services like OCLC’s WorldShare Management …

Assessment In Practice (Presentation), Rebecca L. Mugridge

University Libraries Faculty Scholarship

This presentation provides some strategies that cataloging managers can use to evaluate and assess the services they offer.

Collaboration At The Troy University Libraries, Erin E. Boyd, Olga Casey, Ruth Elder, Jana Slay

Articles, Scholarship, and Creative Works by Faculty of University Libraries

With relatively new staff in all the Troy University campus libraries technical services departments, it was critical to collaborate on policies and procedures for consistency. Developing an online manual housed on a wiki that could be used and contributed to by staff on all three campuses was essential to this goal. Multi-campus meetings and online discussions are additional methods we use to promote collaboration. This article will include a literature review of collaboration and wikis along with methods the Troy University Libraries Technical Services departments are using to establish communication across the campuses. © 2013 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, …