2018 Charleston Library Conference

These short “pecha kucha-like” sessions will feature four PowerPoint presentations of 6 minutes and 40 seconds each. We will have time at the end of the session intended for Q&A for all presenters. Come for a lively, rapid-fire group of talks.

1) Assembling the Future Ready Technical Services Team in SMU Libraries (Heng Kai Leong, Singapore Management University)

Libraries today are faced with complex challenges that are brought about by the shift from print to electronic resources over the last decade. The rapid growth in the number of electronic resources requires libraries to allocate additional manpower to support work processes in various stages of the electronic resources lifecycle. The question that we need to ask ourselves is: What is the impetus for our staff to change? Are they prepared to embrace the change and to start to learn, unlearn and relearn? The traditional organizational structure of a Library’s Technical Services department is designed to support the daily operations of printed monographs, serials and audio/visual materials, but in today’s world, are libraries still procuring these resources as much as they do years back? How can the department morphed into one that works effectively and efficiently for electronic resources? Using Singapore Management University (SMU) Libraries as a case study, the presenter will share the journey of how the Technical Services team was transformed into one that is made out of staff who are both confident and competent to wrangle around the complexity of electronic resources management in the present and future world.

2) From Acquisitions to Collection Development (David Gall, University of Waterloo Library)

Over the last few years, the Acquisitions Team at the University of Waterloo Library has been heavily engaged in revamping a number of the long-established workflows, in an effort to streamline and improve the processes to create greater efficiency, collaboration, and access to documents. Hoping to take greater advantage of the accessibility and versatility offered by working with documents in digital format, and reducing the numbers of avenues for requests to arrive in the department, the department looked for ways to employ technologies and software to make the work flow more smoothly, and where these options did not exist, they improvised and created their own.
While the evolution of the department continues, the changes implemented thus far have allowed the team to reduce troublesome backlogs in processing, set and meet consistent service standards, and create a more versatile department capable of responding to the cyclical work peaks throughout the year.

3) Branding and Innovation at Three Public Libraries (Patrick Roughen, North Carolina Central University) 

This discussion presents a researcher’s perspective on the process of library brand-building at the overarching system level, branch level, and at the level of collections, and the relationship of this process to innovation, in the cases of three public libraries: Richland Library (Columbia, South Carolina), Live Oak Public Libraries (Savannah, Georgia), and Charlotte Mecklenberg Library (Charlotte, North Carolina).  For each library system, an individual library branch or location was selected for a more detailed analysis of how branding occurs in these libraries.  A qualitative approach was taken, and evidence of branding and the role of innovation was obtained on the system and branch levels, and additional evidence is being gathered about collections.