From Acquisitions to Collection Development

Over the last few years, the Collection Development Department at the University of Waterloo Library has been heavily engaged in revamping a number of long-established workflows in an effort to streamline processes to create greater efficiency, collaboration, and access to documents. Hoping to take greater advantage of the accessibility and versatility offered by working with documents in digital format, and reducing the number of avenues for requests to arrive in the department, members of the department looked for ways to employ technologies and software to make the work flow more smoothly. Where these options did not exist, they improvised and created their own. While the evolution of the department continues, the changes implemented thus far have allowed the team to reduce troublesome backlogs in order processing, set and meet consistent service standards, and create a more versatile department capable of responding to the cyclical work peaks throughout the year.