Will library technical services exist thirty years from now? If so, what do leading experts see as the direction of the field? In this visionary look at the future of technical services, Mary Beth Weber, Head of Central Technical Services at Rutgers and editor of Library Resources and Technical Services (LRTS), the official journal of ALA’s Association for Library Collections and Technical Services and one of the top peer-reviewed scholarly technical services journals has compiled a veritable who’s who of the field to answer just these questions. Experts including Amy K. Weiss, Sylvia Hall-Ellis, and Sherri L. Vellucci answer vital questions like: Is there a future for traditional cataloging, acquisitions, and technical services? How can librarians influence the outcome of vendor-provided resources such as e-books, licensing, records sets, and authority control? Will RDA live up to its promise? Are approval plans and subject profiles relics of the past? Is there a need to curate data through its lifecycle? What skills will be needed in the future in technical services jobs?

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.

Volume 6 of the series Creating the 21st-Century Academic Library is focused on academic library technical services operations, and ways that they have been transformed and reimagined for working in today’s higher education environment. The literature on the place and role of technical services, technical services librarians, technical services staff, and technical services operations has expanded and grown in the last few years as decreased budgets, a focus on essential public services, and information discovery on the Internet has driven the profession to re-examine the need or importance of this back-end (or hidden) library department. Topics discussed in this book include frameworks for the networked environment, roles for metadata librarians in the areas of research data and digital initiatives, the renewed focus on the discovery of information and its place in academic libraries, the new “normal” in academic library technical services operations, emerging roles and opportunities for technical services managers, the re-training and re-skilling of technical services staff, hidden collections and needed or unexplored areas of expertise with technical services librarians and staff, the faceted application of subject headings (FAST) and obsolete or outdated subject terminology within Library of Congress Subject Headings, and a conversation about downsizing and moving forward within a law library technical services unit.

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.

What is the role of a library when users can obtain information from any location? And what does this role change mean for the creation and design of library space? Six authors an architect, four librarians, and a professor of art history and classics explore these questions this report. The authors challenge the reader to think about new potential for the place we call the library and underscore the growing importance of the library as a place for teaching, learning, and research in the digital age.

Prior to the COVID pandemic, there was little published information to guide technical services operations on how to deal with crises and emergencies. Viewed as a backroom operation by administration, little thought historically has been given to how these employees might protect equipment and resources and continue to provide services that seamlessly support the rest of the library. Virtual Technical Services: A Handbook is the first to address emergency and crisis planning specifically for technical services. The authors address how to create an emergency plan and how to prepare for an uncertain future that will undoubtedly include other threats to our health and safety. We discuss how the pivot to remote work can revolutionize technical services librarianship and allow us to better serve the needs of a 21st Century library. As the WFH period extended longer than anticipated, libraries and other organizations realized both the challenges and benefits of working remotely. WFH is about more than just doing one’s job, and we focus on employees as individuals with needs that include work/life balance, self-care, and the flexibility to meet life circumstances including childcare, eldercare, and appointments. A unique feature of our book is the focus on employee well-being, including burnout and self-care. Prior to COVID-19, employee well-being was typically not emphasized as part of personnel management. The risks to our health and safety and being removed from the physical workplace provided the opportunity to re-examine priorities and reframe them to forge a stronger and more collaborative relationship between employers and employees. Technical services personnel, in particular, are subject to burnout as their operations are frequently understaffed and they face competing demands of serving both libraries’ physical needs and supporting electronic and digital resources. Management in a remote work environment has challenges that are not present in an on-site operation. Communication, setting expectations, and documentation and training take on added significance when WFH, as does accountability. Our book addresses these aspects of management through a WFH lens. The book also covers the return to work after a shift to remote, whether it is completely on-site, hybrid, or some combination. Normalization, determining staffing levels, employee accommodations, and an adjustment period are discussed. Since most technical services personnel have not previously had to pivot to remote on short notice and for an extended period, the book addresses these issues for libraries as they make decisions about repopulating their workplaces.

LTR 46n7, Oct 2010 OpenURL was devised to solve the "appropriate copy problem." As online content proliferated, it became possible for libraries to obtain the same content from multiple locales: directly from publishers and subscription agents; indirectly through licensing citation databases that contain full text; and, increasingly, from free online sources. Before the advent of OpenURL, the only way to know whether a journal was held by the library was to search multiple resources. An OpenURL link resolver accepts links from library citation databases (sources) and returns to the user a menu of choices (targets) that may include links to full text, the library catalog, and other related services (figure 1). Key to understanding OpenURL is the concept of "context sensitive" linking: links to the same item will be different for users of different libraries, and are dependent on the library's collections. This issue of Library Technology Reports provides practicing librarians with real-world examples and strategies for improving resolver usability and functionality in their own institutions. Topics Covered in this Issue Include: Improving the Resolver Menu; Digging into the Data; The Future of OpenURL

This book explores ways in which libraries can reach new levels of service, quality, and efficiency while minimizing cost by collaborating in acquisitions. In consortial acquisitions, a number of libraries work together, usually in an existing library consortia, to leverage size to support acquisitions in each individual library. In cross-functional acquisitions, acquisitions collaborates to support other library functions. For the library acquisitions manager, technical services manager, or the library director, awareness of different options for effective consortial and cross-functional acquisitions allows for the optimization of staff and resources to reach goals. This work presents those options in the form of case studies as well as useful analysis of the benefits and challenges of each. By supporting each other’s acquisitions services in a consortium, libraries leverage size to get better prices, and share systems and expertise to maximize resources while minimizing costs. Within libraries, the acquisitions function can be combined with other library functions in a unit with more than one purpose, or acquisitions can develop a close working relationship with another unit to support their work. This book surveys practice at different libraries and at different library consortia, and presents a detailed description and analysis of a variety of practices for how acquisitions units support each other within a consortium, and how they work with other library units, specifically collection management, cataloging, interlibrary loan, and the digital repository, in the form of case studies. A final section of the book covers fundamentals of collaboration.

Statistical Rethinking: A Bayesian Course with Examples in R and Stan builds readers’ knowledge of and confidence in statistical modeling. Reflecting the need for even minor programming in today’s model-based statistics, the book pushes readers to perform step-by-step calculations that are usually automated. This unique computational approach ensures that readers understand enough of the details to make reasonable choices and interpretations in their own modeling work. The text presents generalized linear multilevel models from a Bayesian perspective, relying on a simple logical interpretation of Bayesian probability and maximum entropy. It covers from the basics of regression to multilevel models. The author also discusses measurement error, missing data, and Gaussian process models for spatial and network autocorrelation. By using complete R code examples throughout, this book provides a practical foundation for performing statistical inference. Designed for both PhD students and seasoned professionals in the natural and social sciences, it prepares them for more advanced or specialized statistical modeling. Web Resource The book is accompanied by an R package (rethinking) that is available on the author’s website and GitHub. The two core functions (map and map2stan) of this package allow a variety of statistical models to be constructed from standard model formulas.

This book follows the author's successful Innovative Redesigns and Reorganizations of Library Technical Services, with even more case studies and surveys. As before, it focuses on ways that technical services departments in libraries are meeting the challenges of new formats, new work duties, and changing jobs in the wake of less money and a decreasing job force. Bradford Eden's international cast of contributors represent the best in practice; and topics cover such essentials as the impact of computers and technology on workflow enhancement (particularly Web 2.0), changing staff roles, and communications challenges. All in all, a plethora of new ideas for tech services heads and staff in libraries and larger organizational institutions determined to maintain the relevance of their department.