Library Technical Services : Adapting to a Changing Environment

Libraries are experiencing major changes concerning the role of technical services. Technical services librarians also are being challenged about their relevance and role, sometimes revealed by a lack of understanding of the contribution technical services librarians make to building and curating library and archival collections. The threats are real: relocation from central facilities, the dramatic shift to electronic resources, budgetary constraints, and outsourced processing. As a result, technical services departments are reinventing themselves to respond to these and similar challenges while embracing innovative methods and opportunities to advance librarianship in the twenty-first century.

Library Technical Services provides case studies that highlight difficult realities, yet embrace exciting opportunities, such as space reclamation, evolving vendor partnerships, metadata, retraining and managing personnel, special collections, and distance education. Written for catalog and metadata librarians and managers of technical services units, this book will inspire and provide practical advice and examples for solving issues many libraries are facing today.

Stacey Marien is the head of acquisitions at American University in Washington, DC. She received her MSLS from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She cowrites a column called Let’s Get Technical for Against the Grain. She has been the acquisitions librarian at American University for over ten years; before that she was the business librarian at American University as well as Elon College (now University). She has been published in several library-related journals and magazines, including Against the Grain, Choice, Reference and User Services Quarterly, and The Bottom Line.