“A library’s goal is to provide service and access to patrons. Public service… is the objective but the origin of the service lies within technical services. Without the work performed by this unit, the library would find it impossible to provide any real service.”
- G. Edward Evans, Introduction to Technical Services

The Technical Services Department is located off the Media Gallery on your way to the Music Art and Media Department.. You might well be confused as to just what technical services are going on behind our doors. It is not an area open to the public. And as such, it may carry a smidgeon of mystery. The technical services actually include ordering and receiving materials, cataloging them and adding stamps, pockets and covers. Access to the collection for customers and other librarians is achieved through the catalog, no longer a catalog of cards but of electronic records. We call the database or iPAC (Internet Public Access Catalog). It is our duty in Tech Services to make sure the database is clear and accurate. To this end, we search for hours to identify and import records into the database to go with our materials. Other records, called item records, attach to these records and produce the holdings statements you see in our on-line catalog. It’s as simple and as arduous as that.
Some librarians have deliberated over the naming of this department in their libraries and for good reason. Professor Janet Swan Hill at the University of Colorado Libraries claims she has had calls to her Dept. of Technical Services from people asking for help with their computers, with software, with courseware, with telephones, and anything else that might be considered "technical". She says that TS Units long ago (50 years or more) started moving away from calling themselves "Processing" because it sounded clerical. Other names that libraries have used instead of Tech Services include: Access Services, Collections, Resources, and Bibliographic Services. These can be confused with access to the building, fines, fundraising and book services. The Brandeis Libraries use the name “Resource Management and Access”. They want to emphasize that they don’t have to own the documents they have access to. This is true for us as well.
The database has records for downloadable audiobooks we share with a state consortia and government documents that are free on the web. In future we will probably have downloadable movies. The database will need a bibliographic record, or bib record, to make access possible. Someone in Tech Services will search for and download them and attach item records to them.
For those of you who would like to read more about technical services in libraries, there is a very interesting website, Texas Regional Group of Catalogers and Classifiers: Cataloging Stories.