One Desk? One Department.

On Tuesday our candidate mentioned some future trends for Access Services and suggested that we were considering merging the Circulation and Reference desks here at Bobst. Although I don't disagree with the utility of this, and certainly think it makes sense in some organizations, we have no plans for merging Circ and Reference here at Bobst. She must have been thinking about our plans to merge the Business & Documents Center with the Science Reference Center, or perhaps she was thinking about another library altogether.

I have been spending a lot of time writing the 2008-2009 annual report lately and I'm struck by how much crossover we have between Access Services units. I'm very proud that it is now impossible to list our accomplishments in terms of individual units as so much of what we have done crosses the boundaries of our units. Great examples of this include:

• Stacks now pulls material for both Reserve and ILL
• Eileen has leadership responsibility for 3 Circ, Reserve and LP in the evenings
• Collaborations between Stacks and Offsite Prep, (setting priorities and reballancing)
• Quick Check machines, which were investigated by Pat, implemented by Sydney and operationalized by Eric.
• LP uses circulation data to determine patron eligibility for lockers and carrels
  

Over the past 5 years we have worked really hard to unify Access Services and this year's annual report is the first opportunity I have had to pause and notice how far we have come. Together we share our successes and together we learn from our mistakes.

So, while we aren't planning to merge Circ and Reference any time soon, we have successfully merged Circ, Reserves, ILL, LP, Stacks and Offsite Prep into an interrelated group of units collectively known as Access Services.