Still printing

Today we launched an electronic routing system to route electronic journals. From the client's point of view, the change-over is seamless. From the staff point of view, the change-over was anything but. The new process brought up many questions about how things are done, who does those things and why we do the things we do. All good questions, all fodder for next year's project on service review. We also discovered little piles of things "awaiting decision". Mostly the decisions were about what (and how much) do we keep; who needs this material; do we need to continue receiving it. Again, all good questions, but the kind of thing that gets put aside when there are more pressing issues to deal with and then get forgotten. And mixed in with all of that were a few cases where we still receive electronic copy, print it, and then shelve it. So the book trucks aren't totally empty. We are now working our way through the decisions that need to be made. The first one is, again, that we don't print and shelve the result. So a big step forward about routing today, and a small one about printing. Two steps of progress is a good number for a Thursday.