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Advice for the New Systems Librarian – Building Relationships 2.0

Advice for the New Systems Librarian – Building Relationships, Part 2 Previous articles in this series: Building Relationships, Helpful Resources, A Day in the Life I am at the two-year mark of being in my role as systems librarian at Jacksonville University, and I continue to love what I do. I am working on larger-scale projects and continuing to learn new things every week. There has not been a challenge or new skill to learn yet that I have been afraid of. My first post in this series highlighted groups and departments that may be helpful in learning your new role. Now that I’m a little more seasoned, I have had the opportunity to work with even more departments and individuals at my institution on various projects. Some of these departments may be unique to me, but I would imagine you would find counterparts where you work. The Academic Technology…

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Advice for the New Systems Librarian – A Day in the Life

Daily business calendar

On this third installment of my series aimed at new systems librarians (if you missed the first two posts, you can read them here and here), I thought it would be fun to provide a “day in the life” of one of my days. (At this writing, I have been in my role as systems librarian for 18 months). It is the summer semester, so the library is a little quieter. A quieter library means more opportunity to tackle the big and small tasks. 8:00 – 9:00 a.m.: I settle into my office and check e-mails. I check my work e-mail and our systems e-mail. A database issue came up, and I am thankful someone pointed it out to me. Off-campus users could not access the database, so I test and confirm this is true, and then I contact the database vendor. 9:15 – 10:00 a.m.: I receive a call…

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Advice for the New Systems Librarian – Helpful Resources

Help is on the way elevator button

Well, it’s been a moment from my last offering here on the blog. Fall is a busy time in higher education. While much of my role is behind-the-scenes in my library, I still teach and work our reference desk. The fall semester really allowed me to start exercising my systems muscles: I added new databases to our LibGuides and catalog, I fixed broken links, I worked with our IT department to implement single sign-on capabilities, and I took copious notes about all that I learned along the way. The first six months of my role, I learned the importance of building relationships. Now that I’m officially one year in to systems librarianship, I’m here to share the resources that helped me really understand all that falls under the umbrella of systems. Are you looking for fast information about your new role? If you have one hour, check out the “Sudden…

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Advice for the New Systems Librarian – Building Relationships

Teamwork by Willian Richardson is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

Hey there, fellow newbie to systems librarianship! Have you had a moment to take a breath yet? Are to-do and to-learn lists scattered in a notebook, calendar, and in your e-mail? I am right there with you. A little bit of background I moved into my role as systems librarian in January 2018 after serving as access services librarian and circulation services manager. Moving from the “front of the house” to “behind the scenes” was a huge transition for me, yet I was excited to learn a new set of skills. My library has not had a dedicated librarian to systems management for almost five years. I am now a department of one within my library and establishing a foundation of all things systems. About one month in to my new position, I got to experience my first major issue. My library’s users were unable to access a popular database….

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I’m a Librarian. Of tech, not books.

When someone finds out I’m a librarian, they automatically think I know everything there is to know about, well, books. The thing is, I don’t. I got into libraries because of the technology. My career in libraries started with the take off, a supposed library replacement, of ebooks. Factor in the Google “scare” and librar*s  were going to be done forever. Librar*s were frantic to debunk that they were no longer going to be useful, insert perfect time and opportunity to join libraries and technology. I am a Systems Librarian and the most common and loaded question I get from non-librarians is (in 2 parts), “What does that mean? and What do you do?” Usually this resorts to a very simple response: I maintain the system the library sits on, the one that gives you access to the collection from your computer in the comfort of your home. This tool,…

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Triaging Technologies

I manage digital services and resources at a small academic library with minimal financial and human resources available. For almost a year, I served as solo librarian for fixing and optimizing the library website, library services platform, electronic resources, workflows, documentation, and other elements of technology management vital to back-end operations and front-end services. Coping with practical limitations and a vast array of responsibilities, I resorted to triage. In triage management, the primary consideration is return on investment (ROI) – how stakeholder benefits measure against time and resources expended to realize those benefits. Condition Black: The technology must be replaced or phased out because it is dysfunctional and impossible to fix. Into this category fell our website, built with the clunky and unusable Microsoft SharePoint; our laptops running Windows XP and too old to upgrade to a more current operating system; and our technology lending service, for which we had no funds to upgrade the dated technologies on offer. Down the…