Attendees: Debby Andreadis, Amy Badertscher, Karen Greever, Kate, Robert, Jim
Notes chiefly from Kate, with interpolations from Jim
As noted in the 2CUL TSI occasional paper, rr, jl and I met with 3 representatives from Kenyon & Denison. Small Ohio liberal arts colleges. Informal lunch.
Mellon grant in 2003 for a merger with Mellon grant. 4 years later they say they have a unified technical services.
27 miles apart already share OPAC and storage facility and are part of a larger Ohio Consortia. Comparable in size, staffing and outlook.
Unlike us used a consultant (Maureen and R2 consultants) but general planning, groundwork and committee formation similar. Goal was complete unification where we have set out with assumption that some things stay local. [Karen did remark that it may not be a bad idea to work without an OD consultant: "you know your operations and people very well"; Amy added that consultant won't be around "for the long haul"; then Debby, advantage of consultant is "to pull things together as a group" -- JL]
Started on print monographs. YBP at Denison, non YBP at Kenyon. On account of vacancies, now at both. Vacancies were key because they had opportunities to hire staff and managers specifically for the new organization.
Some staff didn’t like the new model and left, creating opportunities in hiring.
Within TS, let staff as much as possible choose preferred job in new organizational structure. No union. Job classifications came late in the game.
Used efficiencies for cataloging e-resources. Those were early days!
Parallel teams at each college. Go where work is. Doesn’t seem as automated as we plan.
Way more time than they dreamed. Resistance to change. Letting go of the perfect for the good. ["More about the people than the roles" -- JL]. Devil in details property stamping and spine labels!
Get used to working at both campuses. Travel.
Government Documents Consolidation Project biggest success. In general positive but it is still a work in progress.
Formal conference call next week---any questions for them?