This book is volume 6 in the series ‘Creating the 21st Century Academic Library’, which aims to provide guidance on changes in practice in academic libraries and the way such libraries are transforming. The editor of the volume, Bradford Lee Eden, is dean of library studies at Valparaiso University and chapters are contributed from various practitioners from university libraries around North America.
As with other books in the series, the introductory chapter highlights lessons learned and creates a context for the chapters that follow, each one sharing experiences of librarians in overseeing changes in their libraries. Topics covered include frameworks for network environments, the role of the metadata librarian, a renewed focus on discovery of information, emerging roles for technical services managers, and the retraining and reskilling of library staff. For example, project management and communications skills are seen as essential for technical services librarians today.
The discussion on metadata is particularly interesting and points out the need for librarians to collaborate with scholars to enable new services to work, stressing that metadata is not one-dimensional or library centric, and that one size does not fit all. The authors argue that it is essential to be flexible and that the customer is always right, even in the metadata world. In fact, the authors believe that in the current age of discovery librarians can forego putting MARC records into the library system because the catalogue for discovery purposes is dead and non-MARC metadata is more important. This discussion will prove revolutionary to many librarians and food for thought for others. The chapter on the ‘brave new world’ of technical services also makes some potentially controversial comments. For example, the authors argue that technical services staff should give up their ‘rage for order’ in exchange for a more Zen-like mentality. The authors use the quote by Marshall Breeding that librarians have adapted their workflows to maintain the limitations of their automated systems as a starting point for librarians to approach technical services in a different way.
As well as the more controversial comments, there is, as expected, discussion of common technical services topics, such as hidden collections, subject terminology, more recent standards such as FRBR, BIBFRAME and RDA, and emerging issues in law librarianship. Some of the highlighted changes will be familiar to most technical services librarians, including the move away from acquiring and cataloguing towards linked data and the interaction between content providers and the evolution of the scholarly record which is produced and packaged by third party products.
Overall, this is a very readable and interesting book with very topical content which should be of use to both students and practitioners. It contains some challenging ideas – from the idea that the catalogue as a discovery tool is dead, to the idea that loading MARC records into the library system is no longer required, to the idea that the customer is always right, even in the metadata world. It is recommended to anyone with an interest in technical services.
Parliament of Australia Library
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© 2016 Catherine Gilbert
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00048623.2016.1236404