The Subject Liaison's Survival Guide to Technical Services

Subject liaisons are a communications bridge connecting academic departments to the library and its services Liaisons provide instruction sessions, research support, and collection development for their departments. The better the subject liaison understands the technical services functions the better the service she can offer.This model ask that liaisons have vision or collection building philosophy as well as a working knowledge of how technical services staff get things done. Oftentimes, liaisons' only knowledge of technical services comes LIS coursework, sufficient for understanding principles, perhaps. Far short on the operational details of ordering, processing, cataloging, and weeding. With a better command of technical services operations, subject liaisons will shape will manage expecations and assure that your library delivers on promised services. From the author proposal: Chapters will address six main areas of interest including policy, budget and funds, submitting orders, acquisitions ordering, processing, cataloging, deselection/weeding. All chapters will include appropriate background information and further explanations will be devised to enhance liaison understanding of each area. A list of prompts related to each area will follow explanations; these "Questions You Should Be Asking" will be created to help liaisons understand the breadth and depth of each area as they train and begin to more thoroughly understand collections and acquisitions concepts.Positioning the work against comparable books, they write: Most of these resources- particularly the monographs- are aimed at technical services audiences and include in-depth information and jargon of interest to those already in the technical services field or pursuing librarianship in that niche. Liaisons are forced to dig through a morass of not pertinent information to find the useful parts of these resources. One exception, Moniz and Eschleman's Fundamentals for the Academic Liaison, is similar to ours in that its audience is liaisons and it uses the idea of checklists (similar to our "Questions You Should be Asking"). However, while that book does address ideas such as budgeting and acquisitions, it is but a snapshot of what we plan to include in an entire book.

About the Author :
Krista Schmidt has worked in libraries for 15 years and was the first dedicated subject liaison hired by Hunter Library at Western Carolina University (WCU). She currently serves as the STEM liaison and maps librarian at WCU and has spent six years on the university library's collections advisory committee. She was named a 2013 Mover & Shaker by Library Journal. Tim Carstens was a monographic cataloger at North Carolina State University from 1984 until 1990, when he began working for Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, North Carolina. He has served as head of the Cataloging and Acquisitions Unit and the Content Organization and Management Department, and his responsibilities have included collection development, acquisitions, cataloging and metadata, serials, and electronic resources. He was appointed associate dean of Library Services at Hunter Library in 2014 before retiring in 2016.