UC Libraries Next-Generation Technical Services

“Redefining the Academic Library”

Making the rounds is a report by the Education Advisory Board that sums up the challenges, pressures, and trends academic libraries face and presents some of the strategic shifts libraries are making in the “migration to digital information services.” Those strategic shifts, captured in broad brushstrokes as “sustainable collection management” and “smarter allocation of library staff time,” are also the drivers behind NGTS. If you haven’t viewed the report, it provides good context and points of comparison for how we are approaching next-generation services at the UC Libraries.

Transformation: before your very eyes

This implementation phase of NGTS is the culmination of several years of analysis, imagining, and hard work by UC Library staff members who were asked to engage in “transformational” thinking. I wrote a little bit about this back in June of 2010 when the NGTS Phase 2 teams were being launched.

At that time, the challenge was to invite new ways of thinking. This is a constant challenge for all of us: how do you look at a familiar landscape and see it in a new way?

Now that we are engaged in putting into action the recommendations of that Phase 2 work, it is worth taking a moment to notice that transformation itself can be a matter of perspective and perception. By that, I mean to say that when you have grown and then harvested some vegetables and are now chopping them on a cutting board, you may not perceive as transformational the arrival of Minestrone soup to the dining room table. But, if you are the guest for dinner, the flavors of the meal can truly transport you to another place, and you may well think of the cook as a magician. 

With NGTS, we have many such magicians working all across UC right now. They are laying the groundwork for some truly new ways of doing the work of the UC Libraries. Some of these new ways will some forward slowly and may not seem to transform us, and some will burst forth at particular moment as new policies or new standards to which we have to adjust our practices. 

All of it is the business of change. It’s awesome. —Joan Starr