The Subject Liaison’s Survival Guide to Technical Services. By Krista Schmidt and Tim Carstens. Chicago: ALA Editions, an imprint of the American Library Association, 2017. 95 p. $40.00 softcover (ISBN: 978-0-8389-1502-8); $32.00 e-book (PDF: 978-0-8389-1532-5; ePub: 978-0-8389-1532-2; Kindle: 978-0-8389-1534-9).

What happens when an experienced subject liaison is teamed with a veteran technical services librarian? You get a slim but informative volume that details the fine points of technical services in a way that anyone can understand.

The Subject Liaison’s Survival Guide to Technical Services is divided into chapters corresponding to different aspects of library technical services: “Collection Development,” “Budgets and Budgeting,” “Submitting Orders” (from the subject liaison’s perspective), “Acquisitions Ordering” (what the technical services department does with those submitted orders), “Receiving and Processing,” “Cataloging,” and “Collections Maintenance.” While the guide could be read in a single sitting, the way it is arranged also makes it useful as a reference tool. A subject liaison can consult each of the chapters as needed. Each chapter contains a section titled “Questions You Should Be Asking,” which serves as a concise summary of the most important things subject liaisons will need to know during the course of their daily duties.

This book is the first of its kind to delve into the specifics of how technical services works from a subject liaison’s perspective and how and where those two fields can overlap and intersect. The American Library Association’s Reference and User Services Association (RUSA) has a webpage devoted to “Guidelines for Liaison Work in Managing Collections and Services.”1 A 2005 paper by Macaluso and Whitney Petruzzelli provides a toolkit for the library liaison.2 Both of these resources, however, are far broader in scope than The Subject Liaison’s Guide, focusing more on patron interactions than relations with other library departments.

Chapter 2, “Budgets and Budgeting,” is a great example of this guide’s utility. The authors state, “We realize it’s tempting to ignore budget issues and just focus on spending what you are allocated. However, liaisons are well served to learn as much as possible about how budgets are determined and structured because understanding the overall budget situation allows you, as a liaison, to operate strategically” (13). Perhaps because they recognize that this may be a tempting chapter to skip in favor of those more directly relevant to the daily workings of the job, this chapter contains several breakout sections detailing the most important highlights of the text, including a budgeting 101 primer, moving money from one fund type to another, and how to be a team player when there are budget cuts. A subject liaison could focus solely on the breakout text and gain a good, workable overview of how budgets work and how they can facilitate and work within the budget process. This artful blending of detailed main text with breakout boxes and chapter summaries makes this an easy book to navigate.

While there is a lot of information here, Schmidt and Carstens are mindful of not getting bogged down in details. The reader does not need to worry about being overloaded with minutiae that may not actually be useful in practice. For example, Chapter 6 “Cataloging” does not go into the finer points of ISBD punctuation, MARC fields, and non-filing indicators. Though these are important aspects of cataloging, they are less important to the work of the subject liaison and too much information of this type would clutter an otherwise clean and concise text. Instead, the authors focus on the differences between copy and original cataloging and what consequences each method has when it comes to processing and arrival-to-shelf time. The authors give a quick overview of basic cataloging terminology so that the subject liaison can speak and understand “cataloger-ese” when questions arise. And they focus on how the catalog can be enhanced, customized, and corrected when there are errors—all things a subject liaison will need to know to provide the best service to their patrons.

The Subject Liaison’s Survival Guide to Technical Services does an excellent job of explaining the various aspects of technical services that a subject liaison with no technical services experience may not intuitively grasp. It works both as a guide to read during the first days on the job and also as a reference work to consult for a refresher course on a specific area as needed. The book is thorough and detailed while also being clear and concise, mindful of giving the reader a good understanding of the inner workings of technical services without overloading them with too many particulars. This book could be a useful tool for anyone who works with specific subject or special collections in any library setting.—Shanna Hollich (shollich@gmail.com), Adams County Library System, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

References

1. “Guidelines for Liaison Work in Managing Collection Services.” Reference and User Services Association (RUSA), accessed February 15, 2017, http://www.ala.org/rusa/resources/guidelines/guidelinesliaison.
2. Macaluso, Stephan J. and Barbara Whitney Petruzzelli. “The Library Liaison Toolkit: Learning to Bridge the Communication Gap.” The Reference Librarian 43, no. 89–90 (2005): 163-77, accessed February 3, 2017, https://doi.org/10.1300/J120v43n89_11.