ABSTRACT
The electronic library presently being implemented in many higher education (HE) institutions will form a central role in supporting the new teaching and learning strategies currently being developed to deliver courses of study across global networks. The importance of the library’s role in the rapidly changing HE environment demands that its services and operations be managed effectively. The heart of the library’s operational management has traditionally been referred to as technical services. Technical services departments have always been concerned with the processes of library housekeeping, such as the acquisition and cataloguing of stock, and were in existence long before the use of computers. However, the use of computers for bibliographic control, enabling libraries to share and exchange catalogue records, was of considerable benefit to overstretched cataloguing departments in the 1970s. Cooperative cataloguing agencies, such as OCLC in the USA and BLCMP in the UK, played a significant role in shaping the early development of library automation in their respective countries, and they continue to do so. The widespread implementation of automated library systems in academic libraries during the early 1980s provided libraries with more streamlined housekeeping operations and significantly improved the management of library stock. The systems of the mid-to late 1980s began to incorporate industry standard, rather than proprietary, networking technology, with the ability to distribute both housekeeping functions and library services to any connected site, thus allowing technical services to be
decentralized and, more significantly, library services to be delivered across an organization.
