Technology, productivity and change in library technical services

Technology, productivity and change in library technicalservices

Karen Calhoun

Associate University Librarian for Technical Services, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853

Abstract

Based on presentations to the ALCTS Leadership Development Committee and the PotomacTechnical Processing Librarians, this paper explores the relationship of technology to productivity,describes early 21st century demands on library technical services, and evaluates the application of anorganizational change model called “Future Search” to technical services at the Cornell UniversityLibrary. © 2003 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Technical services; Technology; Productivity; Organizational change; Change management;Reorganization; Cornell University Library

1. Technological advances

In his bookA History of Classical Physics, J. D. Bernal [1] discusses the medieval horseharness, specifically the horse collar. Europeans appear to have used the horse collar from the8th or 9th century, and Bernal makes a startling claim for what we see today as such a humbleobject. He claims that the horse collar represents a technological leap forward, so much sothat the collar gave Western Europe technical supremacy.

When people began using horses around 2000 B.C., they did not know how to effectivelyharness them. The Romans used a neck collar that actually imposed pressure and stress onthe horse’s neck. The medieval horse collar, by contrast, rests on both the shoulders andbreast of the horse, giving the horse much more pulling power and allowing the agriculturaluse of the horse to flourish. As a result, Bernal claims, the area under the plow in WesternEurope almost doubled as did grain production. Thus the horse collar had a transformative

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Library Collections, Acquisitions,& Technical Services 27 (2003) 281–289

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influence on European civilization, because with the doubling of the ability to feed ones’people comes the possibility of new kinds of human settlements and new kinds of humanenterprise.

Moving ahead about a thousand years, it is clear that the MARC record was also a greatleap forward. Over the past thirty years, it has had a transformative influence on libraries, asdid the founding of the first shared computerized cataloging system based on the MARCrecord–the Ohio College Library Center (OCLC). The original OCLC, now the OCLCOnline Computer Library Center, was founded in 1967, housed in the main library at OhioState University, and served 54 Ohio college libraries [2]. The first MARC records distrib-uted by the Library of Congress were loaded into the OCLC database [3, 4].

The MARC record and the Library of Congress’ and OCLC’s implementation of it,provided a new plane on which online cooperative cataloging, then resource sharing, then anew kind of reference searching, could flourish. Further, these technological advances–andthe data sets they produced–paved the way for the development of automated local systemsfor libraries, and all of these developments together put libraries in a position to be earlyadopters of the Internet and its applications, including e-mail, FTP and telnet, and the Webitself. On this foundation digital collections and new kinds of library systems are emerging(Figure 1). These new digital library management systems offer portal functionality, cross-collection or “ federated” searching, and reference linking [5].

Returning to the horse collar for a moment, by the late Middle Ages horses were beingused not just for plowing but also for heavy hauling. Library technical services are doing the“heavy lifting” for libraries, too, but it is time for another great leap forward. In recent years

Fig. 1. 30� years of technological advances in technical services.

282 K. Calhoun / Libr. Coll. Acq. & Tech. Serv. 27 (2003) 281–289

many authors have written about dramatic changes in collections and technical services.Among these authors, Rowley and Black discussed the factors driving the evolution ofcollection development [6]; Propas described the process redesign of technical services atStanford [7]; Slight-Gibney analyzed time and costs at the University of Oregon [8]; andMorris, Hobert, Osmus and Wool reported on many years’ of research devoted to quantifyingcataloging costs [9]. Each author’s work reveals a context of a teeming array of informationformats and types, rapid technological change, rising prices for library materials, closescrutiny of library budgets and costs, increasing staff accountability, organizational restruc-turing, and growing user expectations for electronic and digital services.

It is a defining moment for technical services departments, which are being asked to domore work with the same or fewer resources at a time when they must find ways to becomeinvolved in new library initiatives. To achieve the results they need, technical servicesdepartments need breakthrough, double-digit improvements in cost, time and effectiveness.

2. Early 21st century technical services

In an earlier conference paper and in keeping with an analysis laid out by Ercegovac [10],I suggested that Internet resources are driving fundamental changes that demand newoperational and organizational assumptions about bibliographic control [11]. Table 1 listssome of the factors that affect the context in which technical services departments work,before, during and after the emergence of widely used Internet resources. The impact of thelast factor–the decline in technical services professional staffing, rising retirement rates, andthe de-emphasis of cataloging education in graduate programs–can be expected to beprofound by the end of this decade [12].

Figure 2 sketches–in an illustrative rather than comprehensive way–the landscape facinglibrary technical services departments today. In the area of bibliographic control, traditionallibrary materials (books, printed journals, audiovisual materials, etc.) continue to pour intoacquisitions and cataloging, while at the same time electronic resources and digital collec-tions demand new workflows, additional metadata standards, technology-based processingmethods, and new tools like OCLC Connextion (and before it, CORC).

At the level of the desktop, there is a more complex environment for the management of

Table 1Factors Driving Change

NOW EMERGING

} Local collections, mostly print } Many kinds of data sets, local and remote} Highly standardized records in library } Less structure in indexing, mixture of metadata

schemes } Records from many sources; distributed} Centralized resource description, limited responsibility for resource description

decentralization for specific subjects orlanguages

} Demographic changes (retirements, fewerentering profession as catalogers), on the job

} Strong cataloging tradition, professionaleducation of cataloger

straining, outsourcing

283K. Calhoun / Libr. Coll. Acq. & Tech. Serv. 27 (2003) 281–289

hardware, software and networks. Implementations of integrated library systems like Voy-ager and ALEPH, which feature Windows clients, are now commonplace. The desire toachieve speed and productivity, yet avoid repetitive motion injury, has led to an emphasis onworkplace ergonomics and the use of macros. Technical services staff use a growing numberof software applications in addition to their acquisitions and cataloging clients. In the area ofdata management, the key trend driving all others is the shift from data entry–that is, workingon records one by one–to data manipulation–that is, working on batches of records at once.LeBlanc [13] and Li [14] describe two recent examples of innovative implementations ofbatch record processing, both of which improved user access to library materials morequickly and economically than would have been possible using traditional manual processes.

Further, newer integrated library systems tend to be based on relational databases, andsystems like Voyager allow data queries, data extraction, and report creation. Librariansusing Voyager are beginning to learn how to use Microsoft Access to query and producecustom reports from Voyager’s relational database tables. Technical services departmentshave just begun to realize the productivity gains possible from the change to relationaldatabases.

Finally, the role played by the Web in today’s libraries requires technical servicesprofessionals to have not just basic Web skills, but the abilities to organize and manage Websites and to help design, build and maintain digital library management systems and portals.Building such systems is not the responsibility of technical services alone, but technicalservices professionals need to be key players as their institutions build the next generation’slibrary information systems. The new demands on technical services resemble a three-ringcircus, with digital collections in one ring, networked electronic resources in another, andportals in the third. This is not to mention the fourth ring–that of print and other traditionallibrary materials, which continue to be extremely important for users. Nevertheless, tomaintain its central role in organizing library content on behalf of the community of users it

Fig. 2. Early 21st century technical services landscape.


serves, technical services must play an active role in all three new areas. Only in this way willtechnical services continue to thrive and to begin to attract new entry-level professionals tothis branch of librarianship.

3. Productivity improvements

Library technical services departments must become more productive, and not justincrementally but dramatically so. A review of the business literature suggests that produc-tivity boosts come from improving the workforce through education and training, betterequipping the workforce, and improving technology so that inputs produce more output [15].Yet everyone knows of situations in which new technology can actually be counterproduc-tive; there is more to productivity gains than better technology.

In his book Real Change Leaders, Jon Katzenbach [16] agrees that technological advancesplay a role in productivity gains. Equally important, however, are people- and process-intensive change. Katzenbach and his team propose that breakthrough improvements requirepeople to learn new skills and behaviors and to take a “clean slate” approach to how workgets done. It is a question of balance; the results of an attempt to become more productiveare dictated by the balance between 1) who the people are and what they know; 2) their tools,technologies and methods (processes); and 3) the tasks to be accomplished.

The way out of the present dilemma facing technical services departments means updatingstaff skills, changing workflows, implementing technology-based solutions, rethinking as-sumptions, and learning what users find truly important. These are first steps, ones that willfree up human resources to proceed to the next step, which is for technical services to claimand play a central role in the transition to a new kind of library.

4. Change management

Changes of the kind proposed in this paper are not merely operational but transformative.A transformational change is needed that will allow technical services to do more work withfewer people (and due to the aging of the profession, with fewer librarians) and that willbroaden the scope of technical services’ responsibilities and influence. Fortunately, theliterature of change management offers much guidance. Beckhard offered one model fortransformational change in an organization [17]. The stages include:

1. Envisioning the future state and choosing a desired intermediate state2. Diagnosing the present state3. Determining what is needed to move to the intermediate state4. Identifying the stakeholders who are critical to reaching the intermediate state5. Identifying steps to assure the change occurs and lasts

At Cornell University Library, Central Technical Services (CTS) managers and staffimplemented a change model called “Future Search” [18]. Future Search is a highlyparticipatory planning method developed in Cornell’s Organizational Development Services


department. Figure 3 illustrates the Future Search stages and the importance of continuingcommunications with stakeholders inside and outside the department throughout all stages.

The process began with a retreat of CTS’ fourteen managers and supervisors to gainconsensus on what they wanted most for CTS–that is, their values. The next step was todevelop goals and objectives driven by those values. The chosen objectives were to:

● Recover fully from the transition to a new ILS● Align CTS priorities with Library-wide goals and objectives [19]● Position CTS as a key player in library digital initiatives● Redesign and align workflows with the new priorities● Provide necessary documentation and training for the changes

In January 2002 CTS was reorganized to better accomplish the Future Search objectives(Figure 4). The new organization better integrated acquisitions and bibliographic control,enabled greater innovation and productivity, introduced a metadata services group, andstrengthened an already-existing emphasis on technology-assisted workflows.

There were new roles for many. Something that is not apparent from the organizationalchart is that CTS was not ready, in January 2002, to fill in behind the four people who weremoved to create the new metadata services group, or behind the one person who became thenew head of the ordering unit. As a result there were and will continue to be tradeoffs. Somestaff members certainly felt that the timing was not right–they asked, “Why change now?Can’ t these things wait?” CTS managers went ahead with the reorganization however,because while some times are better than others for change, there is never an ideal time.

Fig. 3. CTS Future Search.


Further, staking out the ground and creating the metadata services unit was critical topositioning CTS in new library initiatives.

Although there have been bumps along the way, the reorganization has been a successfulone. Productivity has continued to rise, the metadata services group quickly establisheditself, and in January 2003 CTS embarked on a new approach to bibliographic control called“classification on receipt,” originally pioneered by Stanford [20].

5. Conclusions and summary

One lesson learned is that as much work as it is, it is relatively easy to make a plan forchange. To make a plan that people will carry out is the real task, and that is harder toachieve. People, especially critical stakeholders, must be willing to go along with the change.It was essential to have the support of CTS managers and supervisors for a shared principle–that to be successful in the long run, technical services must play a central role in digitallibrary design and development and in e-resource management. The January 2002 reorga-nization allowed CTS to reach an intermediate state along the journey toward that goal. Asecond lesson was that people–all the people who were affected by the change–together withthe change process itself, are fundamental to whether the change will succeed, succeedpartially, or fail.

The reorganization of CTS was a lot of change for people to bear. At the same time, as

Fig. 4. CTS organizational structure, January 2002.


Diedrichs noted in her article on rethinking acquisitions, “normal” is never going to comeback to technical services [21]. Coping with the change required a continuous flow ofinformation, the willingness to honor individuals’ resistance to change, the creation oftransitional roles for staff, an appreciation of the emotional cycle of change, and patience.

Technology is not the key to productivity in technical services, although it plays animportant role and developing technological innovations is a critical ingredient. People arethe key to success, together with what they know, their attitudes and behaviors, how theychoose to do their work, the tasks to which they are assigned, and the processes they use.Technical services departments can dramatically boost their productivity, provided they arewilling to continually examine what they are doing, what they need to do, and how they doit. A graduated, increasingly skilled use of information technology, together with resource-fulness and creativity, can be the engine of momentous advances in library technical services.

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank two individuals from Cornell University OrganizationalDevelopment Services (ODS) for their guidance in change management strategies. ChesterC. Warzynski, ODS director, consulted on the effective use of his “Future Search” planningtool in CTS. The remarks on coping with change are drawn from a workshop led by AnnDyckman, ODS senior human resources consultant, for managers and supervisors in CTS.

References

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[21] Diedrichs, C. P. (1998). Rethinking and transforming acquisitions: the acquisitions librarian’s perspective.Library Resources & Technical Services, 42 (2), 113–25.


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Technology, productivity and change in library technical services