College of William & Mary Law School William & Mary Law School Scholarship Repository

Library Staff ubP lications The oW lf Law Library

2002 Finding a New Balance: Technical Services Meets James S. Heller William & Mary Law School, [email protected]

Repository Citation Heller, James S., "Finding a New Balance: Technical Services Meets Adidas" (2002). Library Staff Publications. 94. https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/libpubs/94

Copyright c 2002 by the authors. This article is brought to you by the William & Mary Law School Scholarship Repository. https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/libpubs . I _____ · __

approximately 170 workers are involved in making a single pair. The process of bringing a Nike to market involves category product teams consisting of Nike designers, developers and marketing specialists, according to the Nike Web site... . The process of creating athletic may be fascinating to those who manage New Balance and Nike. But most customers who buy athletic shoes really don't care about the nuances of the shoe-making process. They just want to find shoes that fit, thar meet their needs, and are available at fair prices. The same holds true for information shoppers: Library patrons are not interested in how the mformation arrived at the library (or ro their computers); they just want to be able to find the information when rhey need it. Librarians are designers, manufacturers, packagen;, advertisers, retailers and customer­ service representatives. Public services staff­ the library's "salespersons"- connect here is little difference between rhe library customer with the product: finding the right pair of shoes information. Public services staff can't and finding the right piece of T perform their duties without the library's information. Connecting library users to technical services unit. Technical services the information they need is pretty similar staff deliver the product to the market: to how a shoe company makes, distributes, They order, receive, inventory, process, markets and sells shoes. Before books are pay for, catalog and shelve the items. Finding a placed the shelves, the goal of the library's technical services unit is to ensure Efficiency. As in the commercial that the library is stocked with the resources sector, technical services units need to New Balance: and materials library customers need and work efficiently without sacrificing quality. delivered to them when they need it. If Nike isn't efficient, it will either make fewer shoes, or its shoes will be more Technical A cusromer can find shoes by checking expensive to produce. Production can't stop, out L.L Bean's printed catalog or Web site or even slow down, when several of rhe at www.llbean.com or by roaming the aisles 170 people Nike says it rakes to make a Services of a shoe store or a department store. shoe are sick or on vacation. The library patron can locate information, Meets Adidas both pnnt and digital, with finding aids, The s~me is true of libraries. Tfwork such as a catalog or an index; by perusing stops or slows down in the technical services by ]ames S. Heller the stacks of a library; or by searching an unit, fewer materials are ordered, processed online database. In each case the customer and cataloged. A sluggish workflow will is looking for the same thing: the right shoes particularly affect rime-sensitive information, for his or her feet or the right information such as newsletters and looseleaf services, for a research problem. the value of which decreases daily. Because library technical services units have fewer The New Balance Web site explains its rhan the 170 workers it takes to produce a patented suspension system. The site derails Nike shoe, library staff must be cross-trained the cutting process, which involves skiving, to perform a variety of tasks. embossing and embroidery. New Balance's typical running shoe has more than 20 Efficiency is no less important in law pieces of materials for the upper part alone. libraries than it is at Nike. Law libraries use The company uses a variety of"lasts" (a shared cataloging because ir's efficient. The plastic foot mold) for different sports. library that originally catalogs or modifies the multitude of Library of Congress records The Nike Web sire descrihes "The will need more staff Without that extra Making of an Athletic Shoe ... In a Nutshell." help, the library will experience cataloging The average Nike shoe features 34 parts, and

~ ~------~

© 2002 James S Heller IIJ MLl Spectrum Magazine I November 2002 HeinOnline -- 7 AALL Spectrum 16 2002-2003 backJogs. However catalogers cost money. In the 1950s and 1960s, access to with the copyright dare and measured the Hiring more catalogers means less money books and articles was through the library book 1 centimeter smaller chan the other to spend on books, fewer books to bring to catalog or print indices. During that records. One record said 'leaves' instead of market and possibly fewer public services san~e period, everyone bought shoes at 'p.' for the pagination notation." salespersons. Just as Nike uses the same freestanding, owner-run shoe stores. Tennant also criticized subject tongue on many different shoe styles, Librarians still assume that their customers notations. "Except for the differences in shared cataloging helps the library improve use the catalog. But most faculty, students, subject headings, all the differences were workflow and increase production. judges and attorneys say they can find completely and urterly inconsequential to most information using LexisNexis™, Access. An L.L. Bean customer who the user," he wrote. "Since these variations WESTLAW or some other online database. can't find the shoe he or she wants using were so trivial, why hadn't these records Lines aren't forming at the OPACs. the L.L. Bean catalog or llbean.com will been merged? Because the system being not buy a shoe from L.L. Bean. If the When you wane to locate a piece of searched is a 'virtual' union catalog. The shoe a cuscomer wanes isn't available at information do you sprint to your online records are ... merged on the fly after Footlocker, he or she will elsewhere. catalog? Be honest, now. When I searched searching separate catalog systems." Likewise, if library customers cannot find for information on re-engineering "How should our catalog systems the books they want, they will not read technical services for this article, I used mask information in displays where it isn'r them. the popular Internet search engine important but still make it displayable Google first. lf I needed more information, Of course, shoe shopping and when users want to see itl" Tennant I figured I could find some appropriate information shopping have changed over concluded. library journals or perhaps a book. I didn't the years. When I was growing up in the need to take the second step. On i:he tirst Tennant has it half right, bur his 1950s and 1960s, my parents took me Google page alone, l found reorganization M.L.S. apparently precluded him from to a shoe store with salespeople who were plans for two university library technical going all the way. As a consumer who adeptly familiar with their products. services units and an American Library wanted to find his book, Tennant realized Today Nordstrom may have skilled sales Association article on outsourcing. I didn't that the change~ made by catalogers were personnel, but the customers pay for that find every artccle ever written on the topic, "completely and utterly inconsequential extra service. Few Footlocker employees but I wasn't looking for everything. to the user" and "mostly trivial." The are knowledgeable about the shoes they question he should have asked- but sell. The L.L. Bean shopper must use the Some people say that rhe solution is didn't -is why any cataloger should waste company's catalog or Web site, and then to catalog digital information- the "if­ his or her time making "completely and hope the shoes ftt when they arrive a few you-build-it-they-will-come" theory. Will utterly inconsequential" changes? days later. Today most library users are cataloging digital information encourage also self-servers; they try ro find the library patrons to use the OPACs? Not A catalog system shouldn't have to, information and resources they need unless Shoeless Joe Jackson is sitting at rhe as Tennant suggests, "mask information without rhe help of the salesperson/ reference desk. At one time, law librarians in displays where it isn't important but librarian. With this in mind, it's time to considered cataloging the LexisNexis™ or still malte it displayable when users want find out a little bir about library catalogs WESTLAW databases, but there's no such to see it." Rather, a catalog shouldn't have and integrated library systems. talk today. Everyone understands that information that isn't useful. A cataloger trying to catalog the World Wide Web shouldn't waste his or her time including In the early 1990s, the College of would doom catalogers to the fate of such information char doesn't add value to William & Mary libraries decided to Sisyphus, the laborer of the underworld the end user. migrate from VTLS, 1nc.'s product to condemned to continuously roll a rock a different integrated library system. Librarians who deem the public access to the top of a mountain only to have it The librarians focused on the different fall back down, again and again. Law catalog as the most important component features of the onllne public access catalog, librarians should be realistic about what of their integrated library system have it OPAC, because they assumed that the their customers will use and also how backwards. A straightforward, vanilla customers were interested in those details. to best use the libraries' resources. OPAC- rhe Google ofOPACs- may do nicely. It works for me, most reference But it turns out that students and In an article in the January 2002 librarians, and our faculty and students. faculty care a lot less about bells and Library Journal, "The Consequences We probably don't need the Cadillac of whistles than we librarians. Information of Cataloging," columnist Roy Tennant OPACs when an all-wheel-drive Subaru shoppers- chose who use libraries­ described his experience searching a works just fine. usually want one of three questions regional union catalog for one of his answered: Does the library have a books, for which he found seven Remember char the OPAC is just one particular book, article or document? independent records. "It appeared that two part of an integrated library system. The What has a particular author written? or three base records had been embellished best system is the one chat works best for What information does the library have or altered in various, mostly trivial ways," the technical services staff. They are the on a particular topid Tennant wrote. "One added 'maps' to the ones who type and point and click all day, physical description. Another quibbled every day, to deliver the product to market.

(continued on page 30)

HeinOnline -- 7 AALL Spectrum 1 2002-2003 Statistics and Outsourcing. One can't spend time counting beans will not be Shoes vs. Books. Providing library write about efficiency without mentioning ordering, processing and cataloging books; services is not much different than making, statistics. All libraries need to maintain they won't be bringing the goods to market. distributing, marketing and selling shoes. some statistics to run their libraries properly. There is a bottom line: Can the customer As for outsourcing (or "contracting Librarians need statistics that are required obtain what he or she wants when he or she out"), the "Made in America" label is by accrediting agencies and by their bosses. needs it? Placing the customers' needs first quickly disappearing. Nike probably hasn't But unless one is billing library resources to leads to the conclusion that efficiency and made a shoe in the United States since Nike different practice units in a law firm, is it access and in many cases simplicity founder Bill Bowerman burned up his wife's really necessary to know how much money are as important in the nonprofit library waffle iron while creating his first batch of was spent on labor materials or the tax world as it is in the competitive shoe shoes. Staff costs money, and full-time staff collection? industry. cost more money. Is it more efficient for Nike and New Balance need to know in-house staff to catalog and file or should James S. Heller ([email protected]) is the how much they spend on leather, eyelets those duties be contracted out? If a library director of the law library and professor of and glue. Does a library? Technical services can't afford and really doesn't need another law at the College of William & Mary in staff maintain most library statistics, but full-time cataloger, can it share a cataloger Willamsburg, Va. they have better things to do. Staff who with a neighboring library?

U .6.LLSpetrmagainOtbeU20 HeinOnline -- 7 AALL Spectrum 2 2002-2003