At City University Library, we have a system whereby all Library staff apart from Library Assistants are members of a subject support team. This means that they share their main duties (electronic information, bibliographic services, public services, and so on) with liason with three or four academic departments. Staff are expected to devote one day a week on average to their subject support duties.
We've come across several problems:
- staff with heavy workloads have difficulty setting time aside for their subject work,
- it's difficult to get an equitable share of subject work from team to team because of the differing needs of departments,
- there's a very steep learning curve for newer staff.
We're trying to restructure our set-up to deal with some of these problems, possibly farming the more routine tasks involved in subject work to clerical staff if we can. Predictably, we have no additional staffing resources available.
I'd be very grateful to hear from any libraries which have a similar set-up of part-time subject librarians: if you have a system you think works well, how you've divided the work out between the staff at your disposal, any answers you've found to the problems mentioned above, basically any experiences (good or bad) which you've had in this respect.
Please reply to me ([log in to unmask]) rather than the list. I will summarise replies.
Many thanks in anticipation,
Peter Williams
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Peter Williams
Academic Support Manager
City University Library
Northampton Square
London EC1V 0HB
Tel: 020 7040 5650
Fax: 020 7040 8194
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
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