what my job title means

when i introduce myself professionally, i tell people that i am the head of metadata and content management at our library, which usually draws an, “i’m impressed” facial expression, and then the inevitable question, “what is that?”  have you been wondering the same thing?  here’s what it means:

my department is a one-stop shop for all back-end processes.  we buy all the books, e-books, journals, e-journals, and databases for our medical library and the dental library, pay for them, put them into the catalog, activate the electronic things, and monitor everything so it is accessible.  my department is commonly referred to as “technical services.”  i have a pretty fantastic staff that performs all these duties, leaving me to focus on how data are entered into the library catalog to keep the information consistent and neat, develop new ways to do things, and look at statistics.  a lot of my job is statistics: how many times was this e-journal used, how many books do we have in the library, how many journal issues entered the library last year.  those statistics point us to decide whether or not to renew a subscription, add more concurrent users for a popular e-book, or withdraw an old and unused book from the shelf.

i negotiate the license agreements for electronic resources at our library.  this task isn’t always performed by a technical services department, but i happen to have had some experience with licensing in the past and so took it on.  i also co-manage copyright issues for our library.  for fun i do original cataloging of items like spiral-bound flip books that stand on their own and have transparent sheets that lay on top of photographs of teeth.

my job is varied, and i am always amazed at how much one department can get done if it is well organized and supported.  so go on and keep your, “i’m impressed” face on!