UC Libraries Next-Generation Technical Services

Transformation and quick wins, revisited

Martha Hruska and I presented an update on NGTS to the Librarians Association of the University of California (LAUC) Spring 2012 Assembly last week. The theme of the assembly was “Next-Generation Librarianship,” and clearly the NGTS initiative is helping to frame thinking and discussion, given that topics examined by participants in breakout sessions included shared service models; lightning teams as a model for working together; communication models; and new skills.

So, among the questions raised at the end of our presentation, one was about what outcomes we saw or expected that would be “transformational” and one was about what “quick wins” we have attained thus far.

What Transformation?

I think the fact that people are examining shared services and lightning teams as a way of working is an indicator that transformation is already happening. Beyond the specific objectives of each of the Power of Three groups, NGTS is about working together as a system to become even more collaborative and effective in how we provide services and resources to those we serve.

Enacting change at the University of California is steering a big ship. NGTS is not just about a few people at the helm, however; thus far, it is mobilizing over 100 members of the UC Libraries’ staff: from all campuses, CDL, and from a range of levels and areas of expertise.

We are figuring out ways of working together effectively. We are employing project management, and learning more about it as we go along. We are learning to make full use of online collaboration tools. We are defining new processes for getting things done, including communication and decision-making, and documenting them. We are doing this working from our eleven different locations, without new resources, without the ease of meeting in person or of a quick hallway conversation to work out any kinks or questions.

In short, we are establishing a culture of collaboration and coordination across our system as we learn to move forward concurrently on several complicated initiatives.

What Quick Wins?

At not quite one year since this implementation began, what are some of the quick wins thus far? One is implementation of the deposit system for CDL co-investments across all ten campuses. The Power of Three group 4 charged with that initiative has also identified best practices that can help streamline accounting practices.

Another is the deployment of Archivists’ Toolkit across eight of the ten campuses. As we move toward a common platform for some of our operations, there are greater opportunities to share expertise and improve our effective use of tools and technologies.

Power of Three group 6 has compiled existing shared collection services arrangements among the campuses to surface potential models and examples for further development. Power of Three group 7 has compiled and posted an inventory of existing cooperative collection development activities as a foundation for further coordination.

Quick wins are important in terms of building ongoing momentum. But some of the wins are perhaps not as obvious. They include, in my mind, the “softer” but significant steps of establishing working relationships among people at different locations and from different areas of expertise that will be essential for high-functioning, next-generation libraries. —Emily Lin

Shared Collection Services: 4 Success Factors

The NGTS Power of Three (POT) group 6 is charged with developing system-wide models for collection services operations. To do so, and as part of its initial phase of identifying and implementing pilot projects for such operations, the POT formed a Lightning Team to gather information on shared technical services arrangements involving multiple UC campuses as well as on noteworthy examples of similar arrangements outside of UC.

Xiaoli Li from UC Davis, who served as convener of the Lightning Team, James Soe Nyun (UCSD), and Manuel Urrizola (UC Riverside) identified a total of thirty-nine examples of such arrangements and then conducted phone interviews with key contacts from about half of them (listed below). They gathered information on the scope of the projects undertaken, project planning and operations, and overall evaluation—the project’s strengths and weaknesses, and whether or not it was deemed successful.

Based on their interviews, the Lightning Team concluded that success of a service depends on attention to these critical factors:

• planning
• communication
• funding
• management

Sufficient planning early on is often key to a successful shared service; lack of planning usually led to pitfalls and hurdles to overcome.

Timely communication kept providers and recipients of shared services on the same page and helped to clarify reporting mechanisms; lack of communication slowed down services or brought the service to a halt.

Stable funding is necessary to the viability of any shared service, especially ongoing services; many of the shared services lacked stable funding.

Ultimately, the successful management of a shared service depends on supportive library administrations—not just economic support, but moral, cultural, and political support as well.

These success factors are neither surprising nor groundbreaking: they are bread-and-butter to the success of any project or undertaking. For shared services in particular, however, where multiple boundaries (of time, place, culture, institution, among others) must be traversed, it is essential that all involved realize and actively commit attention to these four aspects.

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The Lightning Team conducted interviews for these shared services projects:

CATALOGING

UC CONSER Funnel Project (Status: Ongoing)

• A UC-wide cooperative agreement that facilitates contributions to the national CONSER database for institutions that are not full CONSER members.

Music CD copy cataloging: UCSD for UCSB (Status: Ongoing)

• Catalogers at San Diego copy catalog compact discs for Santa Barbara.

Thai language cataloging: UCR for UCB and UCSB (Status: Ongoing)

• One cataloger at Riverside provides regular cataloging of Thai language materials for Santa Barbara and Berkeley.

German language monograph cataloging: UCB for UCSD (Status: On Hold)

• One cataloger at Berkeley cataloged German monographs for San Diego.

Electronic California documents cataloging pilot: CAMCIG initiative (Status: On Hold)

• Five campuses performed original cataloging for documents issued by 28 California agencies; cataloging records were harvested and distributed by the Shared Cataloging Program (SCP).

Elsevier/ACM pilot: UCSD and UCLA cataloging for the ten campuses (Status: Concluded)

• A large planning effort in 2002-3 developed workflows to process single print items received in conjunction with CDL license agreements for Elsevier journals and various physical formats for ACM Print Archive monographs. UCLA did Elsevier and UCSD did ACM titles as part of the pilot to compare the cataloging experiences at different institutions and to compare the effectiveness of cataloging at a more distant institution that didn’t have the same integrated library system (ILS) as the Southern Regional Library Facility (SRLF).

CONSERVATION, PRESERVATION, DIGITIZATION

Management of UC shared print journal archives (Status: Ongoing)

• UCLA maintains cataloging records, checks in, and processes issues of single copy of shared print journals acquired as a Tier 1 resource. Licensing arrangements include that this copy will be provided.

Management of Springer e-books shared print copies (Status: Ongoing)

• Merced receives, processes and houses shelf-ready print versions of Tier 1 Springer e-books on behalf of UC. Springer finances shelf-ready physical processing through YBP while Merced covers incidental local processing costs. Processing mirrors local workflows and is totally successful.

SILDRN [San Diego and Imperial County Libraries Disaster Recovery Network] (Status: Ongoing)

• In the area of disaster preparedness, UC San Diego is the lead institution in the 16 member organization. This group maintains a mutual aid agreement in case of disasters affecting library and museum collections, as well as commonly accessible and maintained caches of emergency response supplies.

Preservation microfilming service: UCB for UCD (paid) (Status: Ongoing)

• In this ongoing arrangement Berkeley provides preservation microfilming services to Davis for various serials including Sacramento newspapers and journals focusing on viticulture and enology.

Preservation imaging service: SRLF for southern campuses (Status: Ongoing)

• Begun as a microfilming service for the southern campuses, SRLF now has broadened its offerings to include digitization. Current workload focuses on newspapers and dissertations, and list of customers includes some non-UC institutions.

Digital preservation for the UCSD Libraries’ Digital Asset Management System (DAMS) content (Status: Ongoing)

• The preservation of DAMS contents is realized through a partnership with the San Diego Super Computer Center’s Chronopolis Digital Preservation Repository. Chronopolis is a large, grant-funded project to explore distributed backup strategies for digital assets; resulting strategy was then used for library’s DAMS.

UCLA Conservation Lab repairs damaged items for UCSB (Status: Concluded)

Digitizing special collections: UCM for UCSF (Status: Concluded)

• A fee-for-service project where Merced digitized approximately 200 cholera-related pamphlets for San Francisco.

California Audio Visual Preservation Project (Status: Concluded)

• Nineteen institutions participated in this grant-funded project where Berkeley digitized and managed the digitization of audiovisual resources. A second year of the project—with entirely separate funding—is proceeding.

Shared Licensing: UCD negotiates license for several UC campuses (Status: Concluded)

• All Tier 2s are licensed at the campus leading the Tier 2. Licensing expertise and willingness to undertake this activity varies from campus to campus. The willingness to negotiate on certain license issues varies from campus to campus.

Canadian Literature Project: UCLA and SRLF for the ten campuses (Status: Concluded)

• Anglophone Canadian materials were acquired and cataloged centrally to avoid duplication and provide access to the materials.

NON-UC PROJECTS

2CUL (Status: Ongoing)

• Initially supported by a grant ($385,000) from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the libraries at Cornell and Columbia started to collaborate in the following areas: 1) Technical services (acquisitions, cataloging, e-resource management); 2) Collection development/global resources collecting; 3) Technology infrastructure/digital preservation.

Orbis Cascade demand-driven acquisition e-book pilot (Status: Concluded)

• A successful non-UC project that looked at patron-driven acquisitions over the entire consortium so that the titles could be shared with all members; the pilot is morphing into an ongoing workflow. Used EBL and YBP as vendors. Adjusted trigger to initiate a purchase (to fewer short-term loans). Experienced some issues related to OCLC updating their knowledge base only monthly.

Ohio State University, Columbus Law Library/Main Library Collaborative Cataloging Project (Status: Concluded)

• The main library contracted out its cataloging services to the law library, a completely different administrative unit; process involved sending some catalogers on-site to the library being served (which was on the same campus).

Orbis Cascade Foreign Language Cataloging Pilot (Status: Concluded)

• In this non-UC pilot project, six members of the Orbis Cascade Alliance explored centralizing the cataloging of books in Chinese and Japanese at University of Oregon and those in Arabic at University of Washington.