1. Presented By: Tahir Raza
The Effect of Digital Publishing on
Technical Services in University
Libraries

2. Abstract
The past decade has brought enormous changes in scholarly
communication, leading many libraries to undertake large-scale
digital publishing initiatives. However, no study has investigated
how technical services departments are changing to support these
new services. Using change management as a theoretical
framework, the investigator uses content analysis, surveys, and
interviews to analyze how libraries at the cutting edge of library-
based digital publishing are utilizing their technical services
departments to support these new initiatives and how these changes
are being handled. The findings indicate that while many technical
services departments are actively supporting library-based digital
publishing to some degree, many functions traditionally provided
by technical services are being handled by other units within the
library.

3. Introduction
This survey examines how technical services departments
in ARL libraries are changing to accommodate library-based
digital publishing initiatives, and how they are likely to change in
the near future. The results of this survey will be of use to
libraries currently involved in digital publishing to compare their
own integration of technical services with digital publishing to
the efforts of their peers. For libraries not yet involved with
digital publishing, this research will provide insight into how
other libraries have integrated these new activities into their
organization.
Cont…

4. For the purpose of this survey, “technical services” will
be broadly defined as “those services involved in the acquisition
or collection, preservation and organization of information in
any form or medium for the purpose of eventual
dissemination”.
“Digital publishing” encompasses activities including but
not limited to creating and maintaining institutional
repositories, digitizing of print materials, hosting open access
publications, and publishing datasets.

5. Problem Statement
Technical services departments face both new
opportunities and new challenges that how these
departments are adapting to support library-based digital
publishing initiatives and how university libraries manage
those changes. More precisely, are technical services
departments assuming new roles and responsibilities, and
what is the impact on departmental operations and their
organizational structures?

6. How To Solve These Problems
Library managers should be strategic in their hiring and
training to ensure a staff that is qualified and prepared for
both present and future responsibilities. Furthermore,
library directors and technical services managers will be
exposed to different strategies to transform technical
services departments to support library-based digital
publishing initiatives.

7. Literature Review
Digital publishing is seen as a natural fit for libraries.
Wittenberg notes the need for collaboration and “the creation of
new kinds of hybrid organizations and staff” to support digital
publishing, but that traditional skills found within libraries
including the organization, storage, preservation and delivery of
information are important skills that will help position libraries at
the forefront of digital publishing.
Simmons–Welburn, Donovan, and Bender state that one of
the key roles for libraries will be to integrate digital publishing into
their core services
Cont…..

8. by curating digital collections and supporting institutional
repositories.
Thomas notes that the library's role is becoming less passive and
more active in leveraging existing areas of library expertise, but
notes a need for organizational development of non-traditional
skills including “content acquisitions, editorial management,
contract negotiation, marketing and subscription management”
The need for close collaboration between library units in
supporting digital publishing is an important theme.
Fleming, Mering, and Wolfe note that metadata creation has
become the domain of many units across libraries and that catalog
librarians typically play the role of overseer or advisor to maintain
metadata quality.

9. Theoretical Framework
Lewin describes change process in libraries undergoing a
three-stage process of
 unfreezing
 moving
 Refreezing
Ven and Poole identified four ideal types of change:
 Life-cycle
 Evolutionary
 Teleological
 Dialectical

10. Research Questions
This study posed the following set of questions to probe how technical
services departments are changing to support digital publishing:
 What are the reporting structures for technical services staff involved in
digital publishing initiatives?
 How do technical services departments support library-based digital
publishing initiatives?
 What specific roles and responsibilities are they assuming to support digital
publishing initiatives?
 How are they changing to accommodate digital publishing initiatives?
 What strategies are managers using to change the departments to support
digital publishing?
 What are the generating mechanisms and event progressions for change
processes in those departments transforming to accommodate digital
publishing?

11. Procedures or Projects
The eight categories of digital publishing initiative within individual libraries:
 institutional repository (online platform for collecting, preserving and
disseminating the output of a university)
 disciplinary repository (online platform for collecting, preserving and
disseminating the work of scholars in a specific discipline)
 hosted open access journals or books (freely available digitally-born scholarly
books and/or journals)
 digitized special collections (digitized copies of rare or specialized physical
collections)
 dataset management and preservation (online platform for collecting, preserving
and disseminating research datasets)
 digitized orphan or public domain works (digitized versions of physical items that
are in the public domain or qualify as orphan works)
 digitized university press content (digitized content published by a university
press or a “digital imprint” of the library)
 print-on-demand (on-demand production of bound, print books from digitized
copies).

12. Procedures or Projects
The eight tasks listed in the survey consisted of the following:
 metadata and cataloging
 scanning and digitization
 loading content into an online platform
 technical maintenance of an online platform
 technical maintenance of servers or hardware
 working and liaising with partners outside the library
 promotion and marketing
 formatting and editing of content

13. Conclusion
The findings of this research call into question whether
Godden's very broad definition of technical services as
“those services involved in the acquisition or collection,
preservation and organization of information in any form or
medium for the purpose of eventual dissemination”. Digital
publishing presents new needs that, in many cases, simply
cannot be met by existing technical services departments
due to difficulties posed by retraining existing personnel and
insufficient staffing.
Cont……

14. The question remains whether the change we are
witnessing in technical services departments is best
described by an evolutionary model where the competition
for scarce resources (e.g., money and staff time) results in a
fundamental change, or a life-cycle model where technical
services departments are destined to gradually shrink in
both size and importance.
As library directors plan for future library services and
adjust library structures to best accommodate these new
functions, technical services departments will be
fundamentally important to the larger change process and its
eventual outcomes.

15. Thank You