From: October Ivins <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 8 Dec 2015 14:58:00 -0500

* Please excuse multiple postings*

If you are a library manager responsible for technical services, you
can help ALCTS* today by providing your feedback about library
technical services talent management policies and practices.
Responses from public and special libraries are especially welcome.

Are you interested in understanding how libraries are incorporating
new functional areas and staff roles into technical services and other
areas of the library?  Have you wondered how staff members recruited
for these new roles are supported?  These and similar questions have
motivated our ALCTS President’s Program Committee to plan a program
for the ALA Midwinter Meeting in Boston on January 8, 2016, and to
create this survey.

http://www.ala.org/alcts/events/mw/2016/vc2

We are grateful for support from our sponsor, OCLC.

We plan to share preliminary results at the Symposium and to publish
our findings.  We will reference responses received by December 21st
at the Symposium.  We will also post a summary of results to listservs
after the survey closes on January 22, 2016.

Responses recruited via listservs will be compiled separately and
compared to those of our primary respondents (see below). This means
we are unconcerned with the self-selection bias, the opportunity for
multiple responses from the same institution (or even the same
individual) and those who may not be technical services managers.  The
survey link is provided at the end of this message.

Our primary respondents are specifically identified staff members at
224 academic libraries.   For larger libraries, these are the
associate or assistant dean or director responsible for technical
services, a department head or other manager in technical services,
and the person in charge of human resources. For smaller libraries, we
invited the library dean or director to respond rather than an
associate or assistant dean or director.  We hope to see whether and
how these different perspectives influence responses.   This means
that some of the questions may seem out of scope for some respondents.
If you think you can provide a useful response, please do, but you
should also feel free to skip questions that seem out of scope to you.

Our survey draws on research reported in ARL Spec Kit 344 on Talent
Management in Academic Libraries. The Spec Kit includes these areas
related to talent management: talent strategy, recruitment and hiring,
retention, employee engagement, job classification management,
compensation management, performance assessment, competencies,
professional development planning, and leadership and succession
planning. Since many key roles in technical services are filled by
paraprofessionals, we are including their skills and training needs in
the survey.

The survey begins with open-ended questions about leadership and
succession planning, and continues with questions about specific
skills: technical, soft, leadership, and working style. It concludes
with questions about training needs and options. Please feel free to
page ahead to get a sense of the full survey. (You will be able to
back up.)

Since this is a new area of research for our committee, we have
incorporated a number of opportunities for your comments.  We have
pretested the survey and, based on this and on the reports of early
respondents, believe it will require about 25 to 30 minutes.

Follow this link to the Survey:

https://unlv.co1.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_8Dnc6kCthVej3uJ

*ALCTS is the Association for Library Collection and Technical
Services, a division of the American Library Association.

Thank you for your interest in the future of technical services.  If
you have any questions about the survey or about our work, please feel
free to contact me.

Thank you,


(Ms.) October Ivins, MLS
Ivins eContent Solutions
Chair, ALCTS Presidents Program 2016
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