HCL Technical Services

HCL Technical Services in the 21st Century: Vision for a New Organizational Structure - March 2009

HCL Technical Services supports the Library in the 21st century by providing the intellectual infrastructure that facilitates access for our community of users to our diverse collections and an expanding array of services. 

We operate within an environment of changing user needs.  New technologies that are available to us can foster improvements in workflows and an opportunity to meet changing expectations in the support of library services in teaching and research and in the evolution of our catalog and databases and their use.   

Providing bibliographic access and support to discovery through metadata is changing.  Across academic institutions, technical services units are seeing broad shifts from support for mainstream material cataloging to the support for unique titles and those more esoteric or specialized materials that represent the strength of the respective institution.  This is made possible by changes in technology and a greater understanding among libraries of the strength and benefit of participation in cataloging and metadata creation activities that occur at a network level and allow all libraries to take advantage of cooperative cataloging that occurs within a much larger framework of individuals.   

To meet the challenges ahead, we must reexamine our current organization and make changes that will position HCLTS to meet the demand for: increased access to hidden collections; increased access to non MARC metadata; simpler and quicker means of access to materials after receipt; and a climate of reduced budgets and changing staffing models. 

The following goals and principles guide our discussions and planning for reorganization.

    Our goals in HCL Technical Services include the following:
  • Responsive and proactive service to users through timely and efficient processing
  • Creating or making use of metadata that ensures ongoing and effective access for discovery and retrieval for our users
  • Supporting quick and easy access to materials to support teaching and research needs
  • Provision of high quality and forward-looking acquisition and metadata services
  • Streamlined workflows that take advantage of automated processes to support our work
  • Maximizing use of staff skills and language expertise
  • Ability to respond positively to fluctuations in activity due to seasonal, staffing or vendor changes
  • Development and perpetuation of effective communication strategies with campus units

The following guidelines, principles and actions direct our work toward establishing a new organizational structure to support acquisitions, cataloging and metadata services in this new environment: 

  • Reduction of physical handling of material
  • Reduction of customized processing routines (e.g. local classification schemes – non LC)
  • Elimination of backlogs and automated enhancement of brief records downstream
  • Increasing original cataloging output  since we often acquire materials that do not have cataloging records available at time of receipt
  • Increasing reliance on and provision of collaborative work with our peers (working at the network level)
  • Expanded use of cost effective vendor services to facilitate the opportunity to re-prioritize our cataloging and metadata work
  • Adoption of current, innovative and new sources of technology
  • Actively working toward identifying and exposing our hidden collections
  • Active quality control mechanisms in place
  • Standardization of technical services practices and policies across HCL
  • Discontinuation of check-in and claiming for most periodicals
  • Reduction in binding for print periodicals
  • Preference for paperback monographs with binding driven by use
  • Preference for electronic access

To meet these goals and support our mission most effectively, we need an organization that addresses the following functional areas:

  • Acquisitions (ordering)
  • Acquisitions (receiving and payment)
  • Direct access processing, using vendor-supplied cataloging and shelf-ready physical processing when available
  • Copy or modified cataloging
  • Original MARC cataloging
  • Classification on receipt
  • Non-book processing
  • Non-MARC metadata creation
  • Hidden collection support
  • Serial management
  • Government documents management
  • E-resources management
  • Support for various libraries/units
  • Quality control and patron assistance – communication coordinator for all libraries
  • Technology support
  • Reporting support
  • Training and documentation support

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