Cross-Train Your New Hire With a Plan and Schedule

Abstract

Texas A&M University (TAMU) Libraries is the first library in the nation to offer free local document delivery and interlibrary loan services to its entire campus of customers, including undergraduates, graduates, faculty, and staff members. This service has been provided since 2002. Our mission, as one might surmise, is to ”get it for you,” no matter where the material resides, be it in our own collections or anywhere in the world (Yang 2004, 2005, 2012). The Document Delivery Services department of TAMU Libraries is responsible for interlibrary loan, book retrieval from library stacks for customers to pick up, and local collections scanning for our campus of over 70,000 customers. The department originally had 13 team members—five for borrowing functions, three for lending, three for local document delivery, one professional staff supervisor, one director of the department, and 11 student workers (3 FTE). In 2010, we peaked in terms of number of requests received, processing a total of 235,754 requests. Since 2011, we have seen decrease in all three functions (borrowing, lending, and document delivery). In 2015, we received just 156,000 requests (74,278 lending requests, 54,032 borrowing requests, and 28,064 local book retrieval and scanning requests), a 34% decrease from 2010 (Figure 1). Because of the downward trends in requests, the director of the department eliminated three positions (two in borrowing, one in local document delivery) after they were organically vacated due to a retirement, promotion