Technical Services: The Other Reader Service

Technical services is often seen by some librarians as something other than a readerservice. This paper explains why this perception is flawed and why it must be changed in order for libraries to deal successfully with their evolution into libraries of the twenty-first century. It suggests that a systems approach to librarianship is necessary to develop the solutions to problems that cross many functional and administrative boundaries, and that such an approach requires the deep integration of technical with other reader services. The paper then defines this deep integration, explains the forces pushing for and against it, and illustrates how it might be implemented in libraries.

Technical Services: The Other Reader Service

That technical services is a reader service seems obvious. However, I feel compelled to emphasize this point because my thirty-five years in librarianship, most of them in technical services, have convinced me that many of my colleagues do not know this basic truth, have forgotten it, or are set in a habit of thinking that discourages looking beyond the immediate responsibilities of one's job. This ignorance is entirely forgivable given that the current generation of librarians has come of age in a professional environment with management philosophies and structures that legitimize and reinforce the division of librarianship among arbitrarily defined basic functions. We still define ourselves professionally by the kind of job that we do (acquisitions, cataloging, reference, etc.) and our professional association exacerbates this division by creating ever more narrowly focused groups and subgroups that mirror the increasing specialization of librarians in their work environment.

The problem of fragmentation and division is not limited to librarianship, of course. It happens in many other professions, perhaps in all of them. It merely reflects the increasing complexity of a world in which knowledge expands so rapidly that only ever-decreasing pieces of it can be completely understood and controlled by individuals.

Against this background of fragmentation, overspecialization, and philosophical inertia, I would like to argue for the integration of technical services with other reader services. In previous iterations of this theme I called it deep integration, but I did not coin the term. ¹ I believe that this process of integration, this rediscovery of the unity of librarianship, must happen if the profession is going to compete successfully for the attention of users in the digital information age. ² Technical services is a user service, and it is the totality of all user (or library) services, working together as one, that will define the successful library of the future. But, stating this a priori is not sufficient. To make the case for deep integration and show how it can happen, this paper will first review what colleagues elsewhere have had to say about the integration of library functions. Then I will discuss what deep integration is, what it is not, and why we should pursue it. I will identify the forces that are pushing us towards deep integration and the barriers that are preventing us from achieving it; I will discuss how it could help libraries. Finally, I will suggest how deep integration might be achieved in an academic library.

The Context

Central to the idea of the unity of library services is the assumption that technical services is a reader service. There can be no deep integration, however it is defined, if this assumption is not valid. Fortunately the case for viewing technical services as a reader service is very strong. Consider first where library users, not to mention other library staff, would be without the benefit that technical services processes add to information. The mediation performed by processing staff, and the control and order they bring to an undifferentiated and voluminous amount of information, are as valuable as the services performed later by reference staff. Indeed, there would be very little mediation with users possible if there had not been prior control and mediation by technical services. But in the event that these...