In early 2010, Technical Services at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR) Libraries established a Technical Services transformation plan with three strategic directions for a five-year period: 1) strive to build seamless information access services around user workflow; 2) respond to new technologies and user habits to develop new services; and 3) strive to achieve optimal operational efficiency through outsourcing, automation, and streamlining. Ever since then, major projects have been initiated and worked on to move in these directions. However, continuous staff loss later presented huge obstacles to our ambitious endeavors. To forge forwards, we deployed a number of management strategies to bring the division through a very difficult time and laid a strong foundation for the future. Our strategies include a major re-organization through joining forces of technical services and collection development, adopting a co-management model for the division, creating a new Knowledge Access & Discovery Librarian position and forming an (Access) Discovery and Design department from existing staff, and empowering support staff through professional development and other activities. This poster will present our transformation plan and key projects, with a focus on the management strategies we took to move in these directions in the face of drastic staff reduction. Lessons learned will be shared. Attendees will be invited to share their own experiences of doing better with less.
