Who Are We?
Members of Technical Services department are responsible for many diverse, behind-the-scenes functions and responsibilities that provide access to resources and services for students and employees at Clark College Libraries. Read about our goals and projects below to learn how we support library operations and learning at Clark College.
Technical Services Goals
1. Support Clark College Libraries and the Unit's mission, vision and values by performing essential operations to maintain infrastructure for access to library resources, services, and academic success support.
- Core Library Technical Services include: acquisitions of learning resources; budget analysis and fiscal management; operations to facilitate discovery and access to learning resources: cataloging in the integrated library system, collection maintenance including digital archiving, deselection reports for library collections, inventory and configuration updates in the library system, licensing and electronic resources management, serials management, systems & IT support (Library Systems & Applications, Library Website, etc., including usability and accessibility remediation); training/professional development to address emerging technology changes pertinent to library technical services/library operations.
2. Collaborate with Unit colleagues and seek collaboration with other departments on campus (e.g. IT Services), and consortial partners to support Clark Libraries operations.
3. Improve efficiency and effectiveness of Technical Services through professional development (formal and informal), ongoing assessment of services, innovation, and exploration of new technology (e.g. open source software).
Projects
In addition to day-to-day operations, Technical Services department is responsible for implementing or coordinating long-term projects. Here are some examples of past and current projects:
- Creation of regularly updated VPAT (Voluntary Participation Accessibility Template) inventory for library online resources at Clark College in order to collaborate with Disability Support Services on accessibility compliance. Conduct accessibility testing of new releases of integrated library system, and address accessibility issues in library online resources via vendor technical support or via local customization.
- Migration from a legacy Integrated Library System (Innovative Millennium) to a consortially shared, cloud-based Integrated Library System (Ex Libris Alma/Primo)
- Implementation of new online resources authentication proxy (OCLC EZ Proxy) to be compliant with the new discovery portion of the Orbis Cascade Alliance Shared Integrated Library System and to provide 24x7 access to these resources on and off campus for Clark students and employees.
- Clark Visual Resources Databases migration from ContentDM platform to open source Omeka platform
- Migration of Clark College Libraries website to Drupal 6 Content Management System (2011); upgrade it to Drupal 8 template (2017). In collaboration with Library UX Team and GGT 105 User Experience Design course, ongoing user experience testing and design improvements to improve usability.
