Contribution to Book
Creative Solutions to Technical Services Staffing: Challenges in an Academic Library
Library Technical Services: Adapting to the Changing Environment
(2020)
Abstract
This book chapter discusses staffing challenges faced by the Information Resources Management (IRM) Department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries and how we solved them. In 2014, the IRM Workflow Review Task Force released a report that included an environmental scan of peer institutions, survey results from internal staff surveys, and recommendations on how to move forward. In 2016, we built on the work of the Task Force by developing and engaging in several processes that allowed our staff to support critical workflows, utilize current skill sets, and acquire new skills necessary to acquire, provide access to, and maintain both our print and electronic collections. These processes included analyzing and streamlining current workflows, reorganizing the department, developing a job description matrix to standardize and modify job duties, succession planning, cross-training, and outsourcing. This chapter explains in detail how we have successfully dealt with staffing issues such as retirements and changing job duties. We are now better able to manage the workload in our department and have even been able to take on some important new tasks such as conducting user studies on our new discovery system, digitizing our print theses and dissertations collection, cataloging long hidden collections, marketing the valuable work we do in the IRM Department via social media, and doing internal outreach to advocate and raise awareness about what we do in the IRM Department to the Libraries’ administration and other departments in the Libraries.
Keywords
- reorganization,
- academic libraries,
- technical services
Disciplines
Publication Date
2020
Editor
Stacey Marien
Publisher
Purdue University Press
Citation Information
Sally Krash and Meghan Banach Bergin. "Creative Solutions to Technical Services Staffing: Challenges in an Academic Library" Library Technical Services: Adapting to the Changing Environment (2020) Available at: http://works.bepress.com/sallykrash/20/