Family Man Librarian

This past summer I taught LIS578: Technical Services Functions as part of the LEEP (distance education) curriculum at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at UIUC. I was contacted today to ask if I’d be willing to teach the same course again next summer because students are already requesting it. The official description of this class is as follows:

“Seminar on the principles, problems, trends, and issues of acquiring, identifying, recording, and conserving/preserving materials in all types of libraries and information centers; includes the special problems of serials management; emphasizes service aspects.”

If I decide to accept this offer, a thorough review or shakeup of the syllabus might be in order. While I mull this over I thought I’d post the question here: What significant changes have happened or are happening in technical services functions that a course such as this should incorporate?

Currently the course is divided into the following parts:

• Acquisitions/Collection Development (2 sessions)
• Cataloging: An Overview (1 session)
• Preservation (2 sessions)
• Serials (2 sessions)

There is also an introductory session at the beginning and a wrapup session at the end. It’s important to note that this is the only course in the GSLIS curriculum that deals in significant way with serial publications. There are other cataloging courses already in the curriculum and that is why I only touch upon that part of technical services in this course.

The course objectives I’ve written are as follows:

1. articulate the particular role that technical services plays in the work of the library as a whole
2. understand the importance of the interrelationship between technical services and other library components including, but not limited to, public services and systems
3. discuss the role that technology has played, and will continue to play, in the fulfillment of technical services functions
4. understand past practices, current reality, and future directions in technical services
5. appreciate the challenges and opportunities of serials management as an important component of technical services
6. know where to look in the literature and in other information resources (e.g. websites, discussion lists) to understand issues and resolve problems in technical services work

I haven’t found any good textbook on this broad topic that isn’t already out of date and for that reason, I rely almost solely on a large number of book chapter, journal article, and website readings.

One of the main challenges of this course is that there is so much to cover in so little time. Another challenge is to somehow work in more “hands on” type work even though the course is taught almost entirely from a distance via the Internet. A partial answer to the former challenge would be to separate out the whole serials/e-resources piece and I have already proposed that a new course be defined for this (which I’d love to teach). I just need to flesh out a proposed syllabus and objectives and send them in to GSLIS to be considered. In my view, this is where a huge amount of the action is and it behooves every single student to have some understanding of this rapidly evolving arena before graduation as it is almost certainly going to be a large part of their future jobs.