Week 6
This week I had the opportunity to sit on a big department
meeting with monographic services at UW.
“Monographic Services” is the name that has been given to the department
that does the majority of acquisitions and cataloging work for UW. The exceptions to this rule are the East
Asian library, Health sciences library, and serials, which do some if not most
of their own purchasing and cataloging.
| ok...maybe not that boring but how cute is this cat? |
Having read the five page summary of what the meeting was
going to about beforehand, I went into this meeting with one opinion of the
issue at hand, but I definitely left with another. The gist of the summary and
purpose of the meeting was to discuss some suggestions that a committee and
outside efficiency expert had made upon observing the organization of the
monographic services department, focused mostly on Acquisitions. The changes
being proposed are that all cataloging and acquisitions should happen in one
place. By consolidating these services,
it is thought that the university will save money on but would be, “…better for
communication, more effective allocation of resources, and better use of the
subject librarian time”. ( If the subject librarians in East Asia and health
sciences no longer had to purchase and catalog their own items). Most of the discussion revolved around
Acquisitions’ with implications that cataloging was next in line for
recommendations .The head of monographic services basically wanted to meet with
his department to get a feeling for the reactions of his employees. They went through the suggestions one by one
and everyone had the opportunity to express their concerns and questions about
any changes that might be coming down the line.
My first reaction to having been invited to this meeting was
excitement. I have never sat in on a
departmental meeting in a large inter-nationally acclaimed university. After
just a few minutes though, my bubble had been burst, which is probably for the
better. The less rosy my glasses are when entering this field, the less likely it will be that I will be disappointed down the road. This meeting was very similar to the multitude of meetings I had attended in my years as a manager in food
service. The difference was that I was in a room full of technical services
introverts and people were generally polite and professional. Otherwise, it was
more or less the same drill. No matter
where you work, there always seems to be an “us” vs. “them” mentality playing
out in some way. In this case it was an
interdepartmental feud that has been going on for years. Unfortunately the issue at hand added fuel to
the fire.
The one department that had been omitted from this whole
departmental review was Collection Development (CD), who are responsible for
the selection of items and also contains the librarians who work on licensing
for materials. Why they were left out appears to be a political question. It would only make sense if they were brought
in on these changes, because normally, the collection development and
acquisition departments work hand in hand and usually are housed in the same
location. Not so at UW, CD is in an
entirely different location and from what I can gather, they do not communicate
often or well with Acquisitions.
To make a long story short, nothing was decided in this
meeting except that whoever made the suggestions obviously did not know enough
about the departments or think through things very clearly. I believe that the idea of consolidation is a
great one, only if the plan to do so is complete. The main concern is that if the subject
librarians at the specific schools are no longer doing acquisitions or
cataloging work for their schools, then who is?
This question does not seem to have an answer. There may be an underlying assumption that the
work is going to be absorbed by the existing acquisitions and cataloging librarians,
who are already stretched very thin in their current positions. One thing is for sure, there are no plans to
hire on additional staff except to replace the one or two people who are
retiring.
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