In May 2022, Elizabeth Szkirpan was named a Library Journal Mover & Shaker for her advocacy work promoting technical services professionals within libraries. LJ recently reached out to Szkirpan, director of bibliographic services and federal depository coordinator for the McFarlin Library at the University of Tulsa, to learn more about why this work is important and needs more institutional support.

LJ : What challenges do you see the library technical services profession facing?

Elizabeth Szkirpan: I was originally brought into the university’s acquisitions department, and that’s where I got the bulk of my library technical training in terms of cataloging and library acquisitions. I’m finding, especially in the state of Oklahoma, that we have a massive shortage of library technical workers in general. It’s not an area of specialization that I see many new librarians or graduates going into. We’re in an interesting juxtaposition—technical workers were a huge amount of our labor, but now they’re retiring, while simultaneously we don’t have very many coming into the field. I was at the tail end of the last of the classically trained library technical workers.

Working with multiple institutions in the state of Oklahoma, I’m seeing a pretty constant decline in library technical workers. It’s one of those roles where when you work in it, you understand how critical it is to library functions to have an on-site team that really understands your community and how they’re going to look for information. Yet those departments get cut, and they suffer the most attrition. It usually comes down to what I call the “library workers in the basement.” If you’re not publicly visible and front-facing, you get forgotten about. It sometimes looks like the work’s not important because you’re not out in the community or working the front desk. But I understand how critical these functions are to our library, and have constantly been in positions where I am wearing seven, eight, 10 hats, because we don’t have enough library technical workers to go around.

What’s holding people back from entering the field?

The first thing is that technical services are rapidly changing. Traditionally they were processing roles where you would acquire new books and catalog those, physically process them, and then manage the stack. As we transition to more of an electronic environment, I think somebody that transitioned from technical services defined those into more modernized positions. Yet we don’t necessarily think about electronic resources being a technical function of the library.

Library technical functions are rapidly changing and developing. It may also be that library data is a huge part of the next phase of library technical services. The user interaction side of our library system data makes all of our decisions. Everything should be data-driven, and it makes plenty of sense working with that information directly. However, I also think that some of the concepts—data analytics, managing data, technical services as a broad umbrella term—can be very off-putting. The most common response I get at conferences and workshops is, “I don’t really like cataloging. MARC records are confusing.” In my library, I’m one of maybe two or three people who work closely with MARC records on a team where we’re managing all technical functions. In practice, it doesn’t look anything like it used to. But maybe it’s just a fear of how scary things like big data and data in general are.

In talking with people, the most common questions I get are, “Do you really want to manage data privacy and data security and things of that nature?” We already do this. When you’re looking at the number of lawsuits for data breaches and things of that nature, it’s overwhelming. I completely understand that. I think we’re very bad at our own PR. We don’t know how to say, “There are so many different ways to be a technical library worker without ever touching our records, or even without ever touching big data.” But we don’t know how to communicate that as a specialization yet.

What value do library technical services provide?

The importance of having individuals in the building who are local experts can’t be replaced. Even if you have to trek to the basement, you can go and say, “I noticed the subject heading in our catalog, and it’s not something our users are looking for. Can we update this subject heading?” Even if you’re working with a vendor who’s providing records or your library is outsourcing, that’s going to require some time. There really is no replaceable value for having someone who’s a member of your community. They understand what users are looking for, and that improves library accessibility. If our users can’t find it, it doesn’t exist. We’re fighting tooth and nail for funding for resources and to support our users. But if we can’t demonstrate that they’re utilizing our very expensive resources because they’re not findable, it creates a self-fulfilling prophecy that these roles aren’t important.

How do you persuade library administration to make room in the budget for these roles?

I take the data-driven and money-driven approach. I have created documents that really demonstrate that this is the cost of outsourcing. When we look at having an individual on staff who can correct vendor records, enhance their system, or provide additional support, often it’s cheaper, from a monetary standpoint, to have someone in the building who’s an expert, as opposed to outsourcing and then also having to have an in-building expert.

Just explaining what these roles do, and using commonplace jargon, can really get administrators or community members or library board members to better understand the work of these individuals. For example, my title is director of bibliographic services. But if you don’t work at a library, it’s confusing. It’s a long title. Instead, when I introduce myself, I say that my job functions are collection, access, and management. And everyone says, “Oh, I know exactly what collection access is, I know exactly what collection management is.” Finding ways to communicate what we do with layman’s terms is important.

One thing I like to do is approach administrators or board members and get a feel for their understanding and interpretation of the library. Sometimes you can immediately identify that this person has a very limited understanding of what we do. I love to inform them about all the awesome services we provide or how this branch of our library may seem like it’s just full of people who work in a basement and no one really knows what they do, but really, these are the awesome tasks. That back-and-forth communication is a huge part of it.