Category: Articles

With the pending release of Alma and Primo, this seems like a good time to continue the discussion of Frameworks. In March, I talked about the local components of a service Framework. Items described in the ‘Local’ and ‘Local Infrastructure’ rows of the Framework are the aspects of our work that directly relate to our users and include Services and Projects. Services are ongoing and can be described as:

• Foundation—directly related to finding, evaluating, and using information.
• Boutique—designed by a small number of stakeholders to serve either a small group of scholars within Rutgers or broader community.
• Education—for the purposes of this Framework, providing information for a wide range of faculty and students about scholarly communication (beyond Foundation)
• Consulting—providing recommendations and information directly to an individual or group based on their specific need.

In addition to the categories of Services, there are also two categories of Projects. Projects are short-term and require extensive expertise. Projects that fall under the ‘Creating’ column are designed to create new Boutique services, and projects in the ‘Innovating’ column are designed to develop new or improve existing Foundation services.

The local portions of our services and projects are often just the tip of the iceberg. In order for the local units to be successful, there is a lot that goes on behind the scenes. We have seen this first-hand over the last six months during the Ex Libris implementation. The complete Framework includes two additional levels beyond local services: Shared Coordination and Central Infrastructure.

Shared Coordination: Here in the Libraries, teams, working groups, and committees coordinate and prioritize the resources and work of Central Infrastructure. These groups are usually led by a central coordinator and include representation from all of the local units. This structure encourages transparency and equity in how work is assessed and prioritized and ensures that local needs and priorities are fully considered.

In my April Agenda post, I talked about the results of the Cabinet planning retreat. As one of its primary roles, Cabinet provides high-level coordination between local and central units and develops the Libraries-wide priorities for the upcoming year. In addition to Cabinet, there are several other coordinating groups, including Discovery Working Group, Web Improvement Team, Virtual Reference Group, Collections Analysis Group, and more. These groups are responsible for not only making recommendations for how to prioritize the work, but also for completing approved work as needed.

Coordination is essential in all complex organizations, but it is particularly important for us since a single Central Infrastructure has to support the unique missions of four local units. The shared infrastructure includes basic organization functions such as budget oversight, human resources, and communications. It also includes library specific functions such as collections, acquisitions, cataloging, and discovery. Server-based information technology including websites, the library system, and RUCore, are also central. In the Framework, central infrastructure is accurately depicted as spanning and supporting ALL areas of service and all types of projects.

The Framework provides an overview of the components of our services and projects and the dependencies. Through Shared Coordination, we are constantly looking at how best to prioritize and use the Central Infrastructure, but the activities in the Shared Coordination row respond to and reflect the needs and priorities of local services and infrastructure thanks to our planning processes.

I hope you will take a minute to review the Framework and think about where and how your own work is positioned and how it contributes to or is supported by the other parts of the organization. In an organization as large and geographically dispersed as the Libraries, it is easy to feel like our work is isolated, but the Framework demonstrates the opposite is true. If you have thoughts or suggestions for improvement of the Framework, please let me know.