Karen Calhoun's talk today at the Future of Bibliographic Control
symposium is available as a pdf,
http://www.loc.gov/bibliographic-future/meetings/LC_WG_Bibliographic_Con
trol_Briefing-Calhoun_1.pdf
and I wanted to throw out some questions about two passages.
Budgets
"Pressure on technical services staffing budgets is occurring at the
same time as ARL materials expenditures continue undiminished. This is
an important point, because technical services staffing is declining
while the number of materials needing processing is not. Furthermore,
the manpower for processing physical resources (books, serials,
audiovisual materials) continues to demand a large share of technical
services' salaries and wages; ARL libraries continue to acquire tens of
thousands of printed books each year; and 85% of WorldCat is still books
(e-books account for less than 1% of this number).
"My intuition suggests that some sort of tipping point is coming. The
large expenditures on e-resource aggregations (and the necessity of
making them accessible to users) have already had a dramatic impact on
the practice of serials librarianship, bringing new automated techniques
for record creation and maintenance and demanding new job descriptions,
skill sets and tools. The enormous wave of change that passed through
serials librarianship in the last ten years has not yet reached
monographs cataloging in any significant way, but I believe it will."
What is Calhoun saying here? I doubt that she's suggesting libraries are
going to stop buying print books and start buying e-books. She seems to
be referring to a work-flow adjustment of some sort. Does anyone have a
rough idea of what kind of change she contemplates?
Demographics
"For years Stanley Wilder, University of Rochester River Campus
Libraries, has been studying the demographics and hiring patterns of ARL
librarians ... In the fifteen years leading up to the year 2000, while
the hiring of "functional specialists" (new types of jobs in libraries,
often technology-based) rose dramatically, new hires to cataloging
positions fell 45%. During that same fifteen years, the hiring of
newly-degreed librarians to cataloging positions fell 64% ...
"The retirement wave for a generation of bibliographic control experts
is expected to build to full strength starting in 2010. After the exodus
that is coming, it seems to me unlikely that the role of librarians in
technical services departments will continue in the same way,
considering the competing pressures on the salaries and wages budget and
new hiring patterns described previously. I fear that research libraries
will be unable to sustain the traditional practices and staffing
patterns of bibliographic control, whether they wish to or not."
She may be right, but isn't that something of a self-fulfilling
prophecy? Isn't the drop in staffing largely a result of people saying
for years that cataloging will be unnecessary in the future, or mainly
automated?
Ted Gemberling, UAB Lister Hill Library
Received on Mon Jul 09 2007 - 16:11:43 EDT