How Four Became One or When Twelve Becomes Six: Amalgamating Technical Services at Southbank Institute of Technology
Introduction:
In 2006, Southbank Institute of Technology libraries (previously known as Southbank Institute of TAFE libraries) really started focusing on its amalgamated library service to be provided by the end of 2008. As part of this process, the libraries were looking to amalgamate four Technical Services teams across four campus libraries into one Technical Services team that would provide the acquisition, cataloguing and end-processing of resources to the 3 existing campus libraries from mid 2007.
Objectives:
This paper focuses on the Technical Service team and looks at how they worked towards this amalgamation, in the midst of implementing a new library management system in early 2007, changing to a new MARC cataloguing system and also moving to the new Southbank Library building in mid 2007. It will look at how the team worked in 4 separate locations leading up to mid 2007 and what challenges we faced to bring the team together to provide an efficient technical services unit to the libraries.
Intended outcomes:
To create a centralized technical services unit that would receive and process the resources for addition to collections across 3 campuses – Southbank, Kangaroo Point and Morningside campuses, as well as supporting the lending services team with their role in providing an efficient customer service to the libraries clients.
Intended audience:
It is hoped that this paper may assist other libraries which are undertaking an amalgamation of this nature and provide some information which may assist in challenges faced by these changes in workplace, roles and also how the team worked together to achieve a smooth transition to this new amalgamated service.