All,
Here is a compilation of the responses I received.
Best,
Liane
Liane Taylor
Continuing Resources Librarian
Texas State University - San Marcos
Albert B. Alkek Library
601 University Drive • San Marcos • TX • 78666
ltaylor@txstate.edu • 512.245.2643
Original Post
From: Taylor, Liane R
Sent: Wednesday, January 18, 2012 9:42 AM
Subject: Tech Services Off-Campus or Off-Site?
Hello all,
Apologies for cross posting.
I’m hoping to get some information from folks who work in technical services departments that are not located in the library, but in another building on campus or off-campus entirely. I’m looking for answers to the following questions:
· Do you have more than one library on campus?
· Do you have a storage facility for materials? If so, are you located in that building?
· Do you have professional staff (MLS) working within your technical services departments?
· What are the pros/cons of your location?
· Is your location preferable to working in a library building? Why or why not?
· What major changes did you have to implement to make this work?
I’m happy to share the input I receive with the list.
Is your location preferable to working in a library building? Why or why not?
Since our books/periodicals are received here first then shipped to the other 6 campuses, it really wouldn't matter if we were in a library building. We have everything we need right here.
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I prefer working in our location. It's dedicated to what we do and easier to keep track of the flow of materials.
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I prefer working in the library building. It is more convenient if I need to go to the shelves. But, I like having an office. (I’d like it more if they would let me close the door.) I miss interacting with other staff members when meeting them in the hall or in the lounge. I have a window!
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I can say that I really do enjoy *not* working in a library. It probably sounds strange. The one thing I probably miss is that fact that our main library has a coffee shop! We do have a very nice dining facility within walking distance with a variety of food at reasonable prices. I take our vendors there when they visit and they're always impressed.
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No. Time is the biggest reason. It takes time to travel to the main library for meetings, plus many of our staff feel cut off from the main library, almost to the point that they do not feel a part of it anymore. Our library has worked to counter that, but it is still a factor.
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A drawback is that we don't have ready access to collections. However, electronic journals has solved some of that, and we can also have books delivered to the Annex if we want to check them out.
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Absolutely not, except for parking.
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Actually, I think it is. I can still run over to the nearest library if I want to but we get pestered less. No patrons stop us on the way to the ladies' room to ask how to work the printer or bitch because someone else has the last copy of today's paper, We still get hauled out to make asses of ourselves trying to work circ or ref, or the phones, only fairly infrequently. And when I do stop into the library everyone's glad to see me. And I get to talk to someone besides library people, and get a different perspective.
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It's much easier to be in the same building, but if you do most of your conversations by e-mail there isn't much difference from working on separate floors in a large building. Again meetings were the biggest factor, as you had to allow for travel and parking issues.
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It's difficult to say. I've working in departments located in library buildings and there are benefits to being close to the collection and only a floor or hallway away from other librarians. I found it easier to make connections outside of the technical services department, and when working with staff on a problem, I liked having a better sense of where they were coming from and what their context was. I feel that my direct patrons are our other librarians and library staff, not necessarily our students and faculty. I appreciate having access to my direct clientele to serve them better, which in turn (I feel) serves our students and faculty better.
On the other hand, being located in a different building keeps us focused on our jobs and helps us maintain a high production environment. Fewer meetings and less facetime aren't necessarily a bad thing when there is a mound of work that needs to be done.
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Although I sometimes wish I could be on campus to witness and partake in general campus activities and be around more of the patrons, we are very focused on our jobs and are able to do our work well out here with limited distractions. Also this is my first “real” library position post graduate school, so all my previous work experience has been in office building settings. Since this is a similar environment (office building setting), I have nothing to really compare this to.
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In general, yes -- the space and ability to work uninterrupted are great. The lack of interaction with the public does make one feel a little divorced from the profession, though.
What major changes did you have to implement to make this work?
We had to train the library staff in the building we once shared to do the jobs we would no longer be doing; new furniture; new location; new Workflows; some separation/growing pains with the former library staff.
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The shelf list had to be moved at that time. We also had computer banks for staff to share computers (this was before the days when everyone had his/her own desktop computer). The building was planned and built just prior to when I began to work at Rutgers, and those who planned it are either long gone or deceased.
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Heavy reliance on email for communication; very good delivery service for materials to be sent to us from the main library
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Major changes (These are just ones I know about in cataloging—I’m sure Acquisitions had to make changes that I do not know about):
· At least 1 new truck (much bigger than the library van) had to be bought to provide transportation for cataloged books going to the main library.
· A system had to be initiated for folks in circulation to retrieve from the stacks books that catalogers need to see for whatever reason.
· Before we moved, we initiated a listserve that goes to all the folks in tech services who can answer questions of various sorts. This is an excellent communication medium, and it is absolutely essential now that we are off campus
· More book trucks had to be purchased, since it takes considerably longer for book trucks to return to this building from circulation (and we cannot collect them for ourselves)
· If we have books in Hebrew or Arabic to catalog, a subject specialist has to make a special trip here to help us
· Periodicals check-in is now separated from the Current Periodicals area
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When we moved to our location in 2007 we were also merging the acquisitions units for the Sciences and Biomedical libraries. Prior to our move we have to implement several significant workflow changes to make our acquisitions procedures consistent. We don't have one technical services unit. I head the Print Acquisitions Department, there is another head of the Cataloging/Metadata unit and yet another head of the Scholarly Communication and Licensing unit which handles the acquisition and licensing of "e" books and journals.
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Getting the logistics worked out to move the number of materials handled in TS back into the main building, as I said, we had 2 runs with a van daily to move things. I don't remember that other things were major problems. It has been several years ago now.
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One of the biggest challenges was effective, timely transport of materials. A staff-only feature you can’t see on the website is a Webform we fill out (goes to Stacks division) to request delivery of material from the stacks, or simple information about something in the stacks (call no. confirmation; are these things bound together; is it even there?) which has proven immensely helpful.
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Reworking our arrangement with the county's courier service. We might have had problems maintaining cordial relations with the libraries, but we always had that problem with the libraries other than the one we were in, and now more people have reason to stop into the administration building, as the director and her staff are right in our laps, and they often stop in to say "hi." Actually, although we see less of the non-professional staff, we see more of the professional staff than we used to.
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We do have students who work for us—we pay a little more than on campus libraries to entice them. We hire students with Fed. Work Study when we can to be able to afford that! We have the best luck with students with good time management skills since it’s more worthwhile for them to spend at least a couple of hours when you factor in travel time. Fortunately they have several means: Univ. shuttle to the medical campus passes by (free); city bus; subway; and on a nice day it can be a pleasant 20 min walk.
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From anecdotes, I've heard that the biggest hurdle tech services' moves have had to conquer is moving large amounts of heavy objects (books). We require space for lots of book trucks, elevators capable of handling heavy loads, and a loading dock for truck deliveries. Our current building lacks a loading dock, so shipments arrive either at the main library (and are wheeled over by book truck) or they are unloaded outside the front door.
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Probably a year of planning went into making the move; that included finding the space, having a landlord willing to renovate to our specifications, having funds in the budget to allow for furnishings and computers (though we recycled an amazing amount, from the doors and walls of the conference room to the bookstacks.
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There were a lot of concerns when we were initially setting up the space, things like security for personnel, office and workspace setup, parking, where employees could eat lunch. Those took a lot of time to coordinate but I think we were able to address most of them adequately.
LOCATION/TYPE OF BUILDING
We're in the administrative building for the county.
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I work in a technical services department located in a building that used to be a library on campus. It is next to the main campus library. The building we currently inhabit is slated to be demolished because of structural problems. Within 3 years, it is expected that the technical services department will be relocated to a vacated building elsewhere on campus, about 5-10 minutes' walk from the main campus library. Prior to this moving plan, we were set to move to an office building 15 miles north of campus, away from all libraries and university facilities.
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We are on a military base & there is a branch library on the base annex across town.
We’re in sort of a strange situation right now. Tech Services is usually in the library building. Starting last October, we were moved to a triple-wide trailer in the parking lot for the duration of our library’s expansion and renovation—a year from now. There are 2 other trailers out here—one with reader services personnel & the other with systems folks.
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We are in a separate building, about three miles away, which also houses other non-public departments such as Network Services, our Web Team, Outreach Dept. (services for nursing homes, day care centers and senior centers) and the courier services. The Library Service Center (which is our building's name) also houses the older materials that can be requested and shipped to any branch for a patron. We currently pull about 150-200 items per day for requests. We made the move in part since the system was renovating one branch, then opening another branch a year later, and we needed a place to store the branch collections until they re-opened. We are now bursting at the seams as all the branches use us for holding older materials.
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The storage facility for materials is, as you might expect, a temporary one. When the construction is completed, all materials will be moved back to campus. Technical services has been moved to the storage facility primarily because we have been working on reclassifying the collection from Dewey to LC for more than 10 years and the hope/expectation was that substantial progress could be made on the project while the library building was closed. Because technical services is a combined unit including acquisitions, serials and electronic resources and cataloging, all faculty and staff in the unit were moved to the storage facility. The two librarians do have offices on campus as well, though, speaking for myself, I spent very little time in mine last semester.
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We are currently in an office building about 10minutes from the largest campus in the city.
PROS
Pros of our location: we have heat (we had none the last 2 winters); some of us have offices (in the library we had the ubiquitous cubicles); we have a microwave; there is less chit-chat traffic; some of us have windows.
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Pro is easy parking, nice building
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It's quiet here. We don't have a constant flow of people and that's really nice during exam times. We also have ample parking and there's wildlife (deer, foxes, turkeys) around our building. We have nice big windows and aren't stuck in an ugly basement w/cinderblock walls. Being off-site has removed the perception that any one of our libraries gets preferential treatment. That perception existed when technical services was located in the main library...
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For acquisitions, it is much more business-like and professional. We have easy access on our loading dock for deliveries of books, serials, invoices, etc. Acquisitions staff really don't have a need to visit the campus libraries during the course of our work. (Print Acquisitions has no professional librarians on staff, FYI)
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Great parking and only a mile from the main building
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An advantage of where we now are is having enough space to design an effective work flow. And there is space for each staff member to have sufficient workspace his/herself for PC, desk surface area, book truck, etc.
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Pros: Less crazy/quieter than the main campus libraries; ability to focus on work with limited distractions, cheaper parking and parking right next to the building; the building is very nice, we have lots of natural light, and its not a basement like Tech Services used to have; most of tech services is located in this building so daily work can easily be managed with everyone right here.
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Of course, since we now have to get public service staff to do it for us [grab materials from shelves], that does save us some time. However, we're nearer the information technology people, and the collection development people, and can bug them more easily. With libraries spread all over the county, we always had to have a delivery/shipment arrangement. There's just one more library on the list. And fewer public service librarians can wander in and walk out with something they want to read, or put on the shelf, when it isn't finished. We seem to be valued more highly than in the past, but I'm not sure if that's the result of a more professional organization for the library as a whole, or because we aren't under their eyes.
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As far as working outside the library building is concerned, except for the distance, it's really not a problem. If we and the collection were located in a campus building outside the library, I don't think that that would be a major problem, but, then again, our campus is comparatively small. It might be more of a problem on a larger campus.
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all work together in same large office; we have our own identity.
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Currently, we are fortunate to be located next to the main library, our biggest customer. We can attend meetings, consult reference material, check the stacks for problem-solving, etc. without too much effort. Several staff are assigned to visit the branch libraries to work with staff there on problems, although the major technical services functions (acquisitions, receiving, cataloging, binding, and electronic access) are centralized in our department.
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PROS: Centrally located among the branches -- lots of space – ability to organize space to facilitate workflow -- loading dock (given our volume of materials this is important) -- ability to focus solely on own jobs -- upper admin around and accessible
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Our department gained double the office space, giving us much needed room for adjusting workflows. We appreciate not being in the downtown branch; the move cemented our relationship with the other branches in that we were seen not just as an HQ department but a department that worked for the entire system. Staff in our departments were happy to make the move, since the gain in space was so wonderful.
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The only “Pro” is that we have parking immediately beside the building.
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We used to have a perception problem, with some public service staff feeling that the library in which we were located got preferential treatment. Haven't heard that one in quite a while.
CONS
The cons are that we have to travel to meetings, including to other parts of the state. Other cons are that we don't get to mix with our faculty peers as much since we're a bit isolated. We also have to travel to libraries sometimes to do inventory projects, check that a book is on a shelf, etc. or to use the NUCs (we threw ours out 2 years ago).
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Con is we have to travel for meetings in the main library which costs time
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The “Cons” are many:
· Going to library meetings is time consuming (ca. ½ hour including waiting for the bus), so I go to many fewer meetings than I used to.
· I do not know the folks who joined the staff since we moved out of the library ca. 3 ½ years ago. There are at least 10 new librarians and professional IT folks for whom I cannot put a face to the name.
· Many of us feel bereft because we are no longer in the library and on campus. Our renovated tobacco warehouse is nicely arranged (nicer that our most recent library location), and we are a relatively short bus ride (or ca. 35 minutes by foot) from the campus, but it is not the same.
· We cannot “pop into” the stacks to look at or for a particular volume
· We are not readily available to reference, circulation, and area studies folks to answer questions about cataloging, etc.
· Tech services department heads have to spend quite a lot of time at meetings in the library, so they are not here in our building
· I don’t feel as if I’m part of “THE LIBRARY.”
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Cons of our location: some of us work with classified materials which we cannot have out here; transporting materials across a bumpy parking lot is problematic; quality of trailer is poor—have to slam the door, sometimes cannot open the door to get in or out, hvac is noisy; the noise level is high (people bellow from one room to another instead of using the intercom); tornado season is fast; bathroom facilities are less than ideal; storage is tight; furniture is leftovers and stuff cobbled together; safety concerns were not immediately addressed—some have still not been taken care of.
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The major problem is that we are a 45 minute round trip from the campus and are expected to report back there for meetings which are not always scheduled with our unique situation in mind. This has created some issues with regard to productivity because it is not possible to accomplish the same things in our campus offices that can be accomplished at the warehouse. This week, for example, I will need to be on campus for meetings on Wednesday morning, all day Thursday and Friday morning so I don't expect to get much done on the reclass project.
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Miss being on a campus.
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Catalogers…find it more difficult to be removed from the locations where the collections actually reside.
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I miss being able to run downstairs to pull items needed for solving a problem; our data lines are not as fast as HQ, which means sometimes the downloads run 30% slower at the LSC.... minor complaint when you're dealing with 5-10 records; major complaint when you're downloading 500-1000 records. And our systems administrator, along with the CPU, is still at the HQ branch; we talk daily, but it would be easier just being around the corner from each other.
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We do feel somewhat isolated (and invisible) from other librarians. For non-mandatory meetings, such as brown bag talks about current issues facing the libraries, it's harder to make the effort to leave the desk and go to another building, so we're probably missing some useful information. When we were told we'd be moving 15 miles away, we couldn't imagine what it would be like. The university suggested we would use teleconferencing instead of in-person meetings, but there are some meetings (i.e., related to human resources) that we would need to have in person. The planned move to another campus building is definitely preferable, but we will be farther away from the main library and I don't expect we'll receive many visitors from outside technical services.
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From what I have heard from staff, it's difficult being away from the campus environment and the longer commute is a hardship. I think the technical services department might feel a little disconnected being so far away. We just completed our first semester (fall 2011) of the transition, and people/materials won't be moving back to campus until the summer of 2013.
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CONS: Lack of direct connection with public/public services staff (although collection development staff do some substitute work in the branches) -- distrust BY public services staff (*they're from admin,
what do they know")
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On the other hand, we can't run over to the stacks and look at things. Also, the libraries find it harder to commandeer TS staff to fill staffing gaps. But then we don't get invited to as many parties.
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Cons: Removal from the atmosphere of the main campus; most meetings are held in the main library requiring travel time and either taking the campus bus or finding parking on campus; patrons (with already limited interaction with tech services) have no idea where this building is thus further remove us from our patrons; for me being new it has taken me longer to get to know who all the librarians are who work in the other libraries.
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problematic for getting to meetings, jobs that had to be done in both locations (binding) and moving large numbers of mail and books daily. We had to set up regular runs with the library van to move things twice a day. We had 2-3 times more print journals then, along with a much larger number of print books being cataloged.