Making Change, Increasing Value: Reorganizing Your Access Services Department

Abstract

In 2015 the department of Resource Sharing & Access Services at the University of Maryland Libraries undertook a major reorganization with the goals of increasing efficiency, staff engagement, and user satisfaction. Seeking to realign tasks and staff according to function, the year-long project resulted in a new organizational chart and new job descriptions for the majority of the department’s thirty-two staff. This presentation will provide an overview of the theory and methods used to plan the reorganization, and will discuss implementation by focusing on integrations of four once-separate operations: scanning for interlibrary loan and reserves; book retrieval for holds, reserves and interlibrary loan; shipping and receiving for circulation and interlibrary loan; and scheduling for a merged service desk. One year after the reorganization was completed, we will assess the effectiveness of the new model in meeting our goals and share lessons learned for undertaking reorganization at your library.