Editorial

A New Beginning

Mary Beth Weber

When I wrote the October column, I truly thought it would be my last column. This time, it really is my final column! A search is in progress for the next LRTS Editor. A change in leadership is a good thing while Core is maturing. A new editor will bring a different perspective and experience, and I am confident the journal will flourish under this individual. LRTS Book Review Editor Elyssa Gould, who began working with me in 2014, will also complete her term. Rather than a Book Review Editor, there will be an Assistant Editor, who also handles book reviews. This model is consistent with Core’s other two peer-reviewed scholarly journals.

Technical services is evolving, and some of the changes were propelled by COVID and the aftermath. The reality is that our work has continually evolved and changed. The difference is that COVID has forced things to change rapidly so that we can continue to provide resources and services to our user communities. Once changes are made, it is difficult, and often not practical, to return to former ways of doing things. Special circumstances spur creativity out of necessity. Change can be uncomfortable and is inevitable. The number of physical items my library acquires has been decreasing, and the current purchasing model is e-preferred, as is the case for many institutions. With the surge in e-preferred purchases, it is rarely necessary for the entire acquisitions department to be on-site and staff members come in as needed to open boxes and receive print purchases. The cataloging department has come to realize that it is not necessary for personnel to be on-site 100 percent of the time, and that quite a bit of our work can be done remotely as we are working on record sets, digital projects, and e-resources. There are still donated and purchased print materials to be handled, and those materials receive end processing, but again, they are handled by staff on an as needed basis. Our systems people do work that can be done from anywhere with an internet access, and will work remotely for the indefinite future. The archivists have been on-site regularly to handle patron queries and provide access to physical resources. However, the archivists are also engaged in digital projects, many of which were initiated long before COVID emerged. My departure as LRTS editor has coincided with the emergence of Core, changes to ALA, and a new era of technical services.

For the first time in my capacity as LRTS editor, the papers in this issue are all “Notes on Operations.” There are research papers in the pipeline that will be published in later issues for this year. The papers in this issue are:

• “Maximizing the Discovery of Data Sets in the Yale University Library Catalog,” by Rowena Griem, Yukari Sugiyama, and Tachtorn Meier, who discuss the formation of a Dataset Cataloging Task Force at Yale University Library in response to a request to include data sets holdings in the library’s catalog.
• Meredith Giffin addresses the issue of library gifts-in-kind, Spanish books in particular, and evaluation methods to assess their value in “A Holistic Assessment of Spanish Gift Books.”
• The last two years have impacted library budgets dramatically. In “Changing Times: Assessment of Continuing Resources Due to Budget Cuts Necessitated by COVID-19,” Jaclyn Lee Parrott details how COVID and the pivot to remote necessitated a review of all the library’s continuing resources with a short turnaround time for decision-making due to subscription renewal deadlines.
• In their paper, “Improving Subject Headings for Iowa Indigenous Peoples,” Heather M. Campbell, Christopher S. Dieckman, Nausicaa L. Rose, and Harriet E. Wintermute provide an overview a project undertaken by Iowa State University Library to rectify LC’s practice of updating outdated terms for North American Indigenous peoples that deprioritizes or ignores the preferred names of the peoples being described. Metadata Services librarians contacted Indigenous community representatives to engage in dialog regarding terms preferred by community members and updated the headings in its library catalog to match these suggestions.
• Book reviews courtesy of LRTS Book Review Editor Elyssa Gould.