ALBERT

Description: Technical services professionals in academic libraries are firmly committed to digital transformation and have embraced technologies and data practices that reshape their work to be more efficient, reliable, and scalable. Evolving systems, constantly changing workflows, and management of large-scale data are constants in the technical services landscape. Maintaining one’s ability to effectively work in this kind of environment involves embracing continuous learning cycles and incorporating new skills - which in effect means training people in a different way and re-conceptualizing how libraries provide support for technical services work. This article presents a micro lens into this space by examining the use of Python within a technical services environment. The authors conducted two surveys and eleven follow up interviews to investigate how Python is used in academic libraries to support technical services work and to learn more about training and organizational support across the academic library community. The surveys and interviews conducted for this research indicate that understanding the larger context of culture and organizational support are of high importance for illustrating the complications of this learning space for technical services. Consequently, this article will address themes that affect skills building in technical services at both a micro and macro level.