Being in the Middle Sure Makes Life Interesting. Sharon Bressert-Purtee, Susan Banoun and Maureen Walsh (University of Cincinnati)
Technical services departments are caught in the middle of a large sandwich. One layer is the need to continue to manage the same products as we have in the past. Libraries still buy print books, serials, continuations, media-all of these materials require cataloging, processing and shelving. These are the "mark it and park it" items. The other layer is the electronic and integrating formats that require a different type of handling and organizational management. As a matter of fact, most of this the department never handles, as they are mostly virtual resources. There are URLs to manage, linking to and from web sites and the issues of changing ownership and licensing of content. Technical services and especially catalogers are challenged daily to maintain order and accessibility.
The three librarians will discuss how the catalogers are managing the short-term such as cataloging standards, implementation of new software, integrating national standards such as MARC holdings format. We will look at this through the lens of migration to Millennium (III), Connexion (OCLC), and training across jurisdictions. Long-term trends and the likely impact on technical services will also be addressed.