Transitioning Technical Services to Hybrid and Remote Work

The work of technical services staff is at a crossroads--while libraries cannot operate without their technical workers, many libraries, especially during COVID, reduced technical services units. In order to secure a productive future for this crucial area of library work, library staff and administration need to adapt.

Drawing on the constant evolution and adaptation of technical services, this webinar will cover both the importance of communicating the technical services story as well as how to adapt to a world where the library offers so much more than just physical books and workers are often remote. Participants will gain strategies for adapting their work to the current work environment and advocating for changes with key stakeholders. This webinar will be relevant to technical services workers in all library types.

Participants in this webinar will:

  • Gain an understanding of the adaptive history of technical service library positions and roles to better understand stakeholder perception of individuals in these roles.
  • Understand the state of technical services units before and after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and strategies and strategies from units who successfully adapted to survive COVID-19 reductions in force and changing work environment.
  • Utilize current data, stakeholder understanding of technical services, and COVID-19 technical services adaptations to leverage your technical services unit’s role to communicate value, departmental needs, and justify the work that library technical workers do for their patrons.
  • Learn skills and best practices for supporting diverse technical services teams utilizing internal and external resources to identify projects, collaborate in rapidly changing environments, perform traditional and evolving technical services tasks in a variety of library work settings, and revise long-established workflows to meet changing team structures and needs.

Elizabeth Szkirpan, MLIS, is Collections & Discovery Specialist, Contemporary Collections at Harvard Business School's Baker Library. She was previously Director of Bibliographic Services at the University of Tulsa McFarlin Library, where she oversaw cataloging, electronic resources, collection management, and the library’s data. She has worked in library technical roles for the last ten years, utilizing project management principles to help advocate for technical services departments. She is a 2022 Library Journal Mover & Shaker, earning recognition for advocacy on behalf of technical services units impacted by COVID-19. Elizabeth utilizes these experiences to research the evolution of library technical units in the hopes of improving universal understanding of why technical services departments matter.

This event will be hosted in Zoom. Automatic captions will be enabled for this event. This event will be recorded, and registrants will receive access to the recording within a day after the event ends.

If you have questions or requests regarding accessibility, contact us at ce@ala.org or at 312-280-5100.