Hello All
I will be the editor for a new title under the Charleston Monograph
Series. I want to hear your story on how your technical services
department is adapting to the changing environment. I’m interested in all
types of stories, Public, Academic, Special libraries. Proposal deadline
is July 1, 2017. I look forward to hearing from you
Call for Book Chapter Proposals
Title: Technical Services: Adapting to the Changing Environment
Publisher: Purdue University Press
Proposal submission deadline: July 1, 2017
Description:
We all know libraries are in the midst of flux and change concerning the
role of
Technical Services. However, the situation is even more serious than that.
There are questions
about Technical Services and its very viability in today’s library.
Technical Service librarians are
constantly being challenged with the question of relevancy and their role
within the library. It seems
even those in our own libraries don’t understand what we do and the
contribution we make to
building and curating our collections. The threats are real however and we
all have stories of being
relocated out of the library, traditional print work decreasing because of
the switch to electronic
resources, budgetary constraints, work outsourced to the vendor or
consortium or elsewhere, etc.
Technical Service departments are reinventing themselves to respond to
these challenges and threats
as we speak and embracing innovative opportunities to help our libraries
advance into the 21st
century. This book will provide stories and examples that highlight the
reality (outsourcing,
relocating off-site, downsizing collections) as well as the exciting new
opportunities to embrace
(institutional repositories, more focus on special collections, metadata
issues, retraining and
managing personnel, open access resources, distance education, etc.).
*Possible Table of Contents:*
1. *Challenges*
1. Outsourcing –there are different levels of outsourcing, most well
know is shelf-ready. I’d like to see some stories of other services, such
as cataloging, being outsourced.
2. Downsizing collections – stories of print being weeded and why
3. Staffing changes – while Technical Services departments may need
fewer people in the long run, the staff that is needed will need to have
greater skill sets and be paid more. More and more, systems work such as
programming is being handled in technical services and experience with
metadata creation has become more important.
4. Marketing our services – the age old question of how to show our
relevance. Who has created a successful marketing/advocacy program for
technical services?
5. Assessment – how do we assess the work we do in Technical Services
since many times, it seems the work we do is misunderstood.
1. *Opportunities*
1. New areas for growth – working with Institutional Repositories in
interacting with Faculty to assign metadata terms to material.
2. The role of technical services with the acquisitions and access of
data sets
3. Working with Special Collections and ArchivesIt would be
beneficial to hear stories of how Technical Services is working more
closely with specialized collections.
4. BIBFRAME/Linked Open Data – catalogers/metadata librarians need to
be trained with BIBFRAMECase studies on Linked Open Data projects and how
staff are being trained on LOD projects.
5. Collaboration with IT/Systems departments. We need to work more
closely with these units. Are there cases where Technical services
collaborated on projects with IT, such as with Linked Open Data?
6. Traditional ILS – need to catch up with what is happening in
library world such as linked data, better faceting, implementing
RDA, tools
to track workflow, etc.
1. *Consortium Projects*
1. Case studies on how consortium projects (Shared retention, shared
approval plans, ebook packages, shared print/ebook plans, etc) impact
technical services.
1. *Vendor Relations*
1. Increasingly, Technical service managers’ time is spent on vendor
relations. Vendors are consolidating, OCLC is making changes to their
services and not anticipating the difficulties for their customers, sales
reps change, etc. What are the challenges that technical services are
facing with our vendors. Every time a vendor is bought and sold, the
customer is impacted. A component of vendor relations is outsourcing.
What are new or dying areas of outsourcing with our vendors?
Has anyone
gone beyond the shelf-ready type of outsourcing? What about the
transition
to cloud based systems? What are vendors doing (or not doing) to
facilitate (or inhibit) the changes that are occurring?
1. *Distance Education*
1. How are technical services responding to the increase in distance
education by universities and the outsourcing of teaching the classes to
vendors. How are the acquisitions of resources coordinated with what is
being taught? It is often enough that students are trying to access
resources that the Distance Education company says the library has but it
doesn’t.
I anticipate that completed chapters will each be approximately [10-15 pages
in length
Instructions for Proposal Authors:
Proposals should be submitted via email as a PDF or Microsoft Word file
attachment, and should include:
Author name(s)
Institutional affiliation(s) and position title(s)
Author(s)’ previous writing and publishing history, if any
Proposed chapter or chapter section title
Summary of the proposed chapter or chapter section (250-500 words)
Authors of selected proposals will be notified by August 1, 2017. Full
chapters are expected by December 1, 2017 (2,500-4000
words). Proposed chapters should be unique to this
publication – no materials that were previously published or simultaneously
submitted to another publication.
Proposals should be emailed to: Stacey Marien, smarien_at_american.edu
Stacey Marien
Acquisitions Librarian
American University Library
4400 Massachusetts Ave, NW
Washington, DC 20016
smarien_at_american.edu
202-885-3842
orcid.org/0000-0003-2608-4559
<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__orcid.org_0000-2D0003-2D2608-2D4559&d=DwMFAg&c=U0G0XJAMhEk_X0GAGzCL7Q&r=Ux94I2epy8VR4nzn6anjLaEitNisyJ8fb9TJ3iFL1JQ&m=_ZifiUEgcllCB2vuB_YJGs1vgvZ3FUP2BSFeriMkc90&s=tB9InxsAeWxnN1bYBjM1enA8Ak7U4uiDNn8guZzjJCE&e=>
Received on Mon Jun 05 2017 - 13:22:24 EDT