Technical Services Interview

The Midland Lutheran College library sits at the center of the college campus. It serves a student population of over 600, a faculty and staff population of over 300, and limited community access to a city of over 25,000 people. While the library does not get as much traffic as it could, there are a consistent number of students, faculty, staff, and community members who utilize the Midland library resources daily. To facilitate this exchange of information, the library employs four full time staff members, one part time staff member, and about two dozen work study students to fill in the various tasks of cataloging, processing, reference help, page duty and circulation. Generally, the four full time staff members do a majority of the technical services work, but the technical services department of the library is not so much a “defined” position as much as it is a series of assignments divided among the staff.
My interview was with Dr. Tom Boyle, Director of the Midland library. We held our interview via email and follow up phone call. Dr. Boyle has been with the Midland Library for over 15 years, and has taken the time to give me a lot of advice with the cataloging class on top of this interview. My first question for him concerned the selection of materials for the library. Dr. Boyle directed me to the Luther Library website for the general acquisition policy for the college. There are four, hierarchical priorities:
1. Materials to support the current teaching program of the College, noting it is an undergraduate institution.
2. General reference materials in fields not currently covered by College programs but of such importance that they belong in all scholarly libraries.
3. Materials to support the research needs of the faculty and to assist administrative and service personnel in the effective performance of their duties (this may include works dealing with topics of current concern to members of the campus community).
4. Materials to support cooperative programs with other libraries or academic institutions; to maintain and develop a limited number of special collections (such as the Library of Biblical Literature); to form a basic collection in support of anticipated future programs of the college; and to acquire appropriate varieties of recreational library materials. (www.mlc.edu/library)
Dr. Boyle says he uses tools like Booklist, Library Journal and Choice. The library’s book supplier (Baker and Taylor) also has lists of recommended books for college libraries. For the most part, Dr. Boyle is in charge of the selection of materials, but in some instances, individual departments (Nursing and Education) select books to be added to the collection. Each department of the college has a book budget at the beginning of each academic year in which to add books to the collection. In addition to books, print journals are purchased with input of the various departments. The electronic resources are all mostly packaged with indexes (Academic Premier, ERIC, CINALH) and in most instances; the library will drop the print subscription if an electronic version becomes available.
Once the materials come into the library, an order card is created and the process begins. The order card is like a checklist of everything one would need to know about the book. It indicates the title, source, cost, date, PO #, etc. and is placed in the item. Preliminary processing involves stamping the book, placing the security strip and the barcode. Any one of the full time staff members and on occasion some of the work-study students who have been trained in the process do this. On the occasion of the library making a large purchase of books, a purchase order is needed from the business office. However, the standard method of payment is directly from the library budget.
After the preliminary processing is done, Dr. Boyle will catalog the item. Our library uses the OCLC Connexion service, so the cataloging of items can sometimes be easier. Dr. Boyle finds the record in OCLC, notifies them we have the item and exports the MARC record to us. We then have to import the record into the LIS system. Once on the LIS, the record is linked to the barcode attached to it and given a Dewey and Cutter number and the item is placed on the new books shelf.
The final step in the whole process remove the item from the new books shelf, cut down the book jacket to just the summary and author information on the front and back flaps, tape those to the inside of the book, and place the permanent book label on the spine with the Dewey call number and the Cutter number. College work-study students usually do this job. The whole process can take as little as a week to process, but takes longer time over the summer months and during the college breaks when the full library staff is unavailable.