Article
Cutting the Gordian (workload) Knot? Adding Data Services to Academic Library Public Services
Journal of Academic Librarianship
(2023)
Abstract
The data librarianship as a profession produces on workloads can't give us the answers we seek. The library and information science literature wants two irreconcilable things out of its workload data: 1) aggregate comparable data to document and measure use of libraries and its value; and 2) accurate descriptions to document and measure the individual work done by librarians. That is our Gordian Knot. We propose here to change the question asked: how can we achieve a reasonable balance of workload within a group of librarians? That of course implies a focus on a library of a specific type: here a medium-sized academic library of an R2 institution. The goal was to answer a common and longstanding question: we are in continual process of assessing what needs to be done and how/where to shift workloads, but how do we know we're doing it in a reasonable and fair way beyond anecdotes and intuitions? We developed a weighted measure of public services workload in order to assess and track and assign a) areas of declining workload, b) areas of increasing workload (data services), and c) a balance between library divisions contributing to public services.
Keywords
- Public services,
- Librarian workload,
- Workload measures,
- Weighting of public services workload,
- Data services
Disciplines
Publication Date
November, 2023
DOI
10.1016/j.acalib.2023.102801
Citation Information
John Buschman, Lisa Deluca, Michael Murphy and David Frank. "Cutting the Gordian (workload) Knot? Adding Data Services to Academic Library Public Services" Journal of Academic Librarianship Vol. 49 Iss. 6 (2023) p. 102801 ISSN: 0099-1333 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/john_buschman/102/