What have academic libraries stopped/started doing onsite at their libraries?

A.      What library administrations have shifted out of doing or shifted their focus from, or work they stopped having librarians perform, tells us what they thought was not a core competency of the library, according to David Weil, author of the Fissured Workplace, Harvard UP, 2014. This assumption leaves us with interesting questions when faced with the following list:

·         Inventory control – making sure that when we ordered, we successfully ordered, received, processed stuff for “shelves” and reflected that stuff in an accessible catalogue (card catalogue or electronic).

·         Library-specific software plus code to make that software talk to each other

·         IT – we could tell techie’s what we needed done re: hardware, software or coding, and have them do it

·         Collection development from a qualitative, knowledge-based perspective including internal to library and external sources, as opposed to a quantitative approach, though we may be gaining some balance between approaches with PDA and assuming our users are coming from a knowledge-based (as opposed to ignorant, searching for answers) perspective

·         Physical Reference presence. Ref desks heavily staffed by library technicians if these desks even still exist.

·         Archives

·         Special Collections

·         Maintenance of print collections, including binding (which was pretty much outsourced but may now be a nonexistent activity)

            ·        ...

B.      What library administrations and librarians have shifted into, thus implying new core competencies for the library:

·         Institutional repositories: increasing access to faculty created materials, quantifying faculty output, access to free materials (low cost)

·         Publishing: making open access (and proprietary) textbook and journal software available for faculty publishing

·         Digitization

·         User services librarians: managing the users’ experience of the library

·         Digital/electronic services librarians: management/administration of e-resources

·        Assessment librarians

·         Information literacy (new term?), teaching how to critically evaluate information, where to find it and how you may legally manipulate it

·         Copyright clearance

·         Social justice? Questioning of authority/structural framework within which we work

·         Research (not sure how that benefits the library on a campus full of researchers who do more of it and likely better than some of us)

·         Virtual reference services (shared by many libraries)

·         ...