Welcome to Backstory, our new webzine highlighting technical services at CUL. I know that many of you may be thinking: why? We already know what technical services staff do: order books, receive and pay for them, catalog them, label them. What else do we need to know? What else is there?

Well, a lot, actually. Those of us who work in technical services around campus are engaged in many projects, from developing new workflows and software tools that take maximum advantage of automation to assisting faculty in managing digital assets. We're raising the visibility of our digital resources by creating and loading MARC records into the catalog and generating metadata records for Find E-Journals and Find Databases services. We're investigating new tools to help track and manage our networked resources more effectively. And we are frequent authors, speakers and leaders in various professional organizations, all around the world. We think the work we do is not only important, but very stimulating, and we want the broader world to know more about it.

Here's a sample of what CUL technical services staff have been writing, presenting, or doing in the broader world over the past few months:

ENDUser, the national Endeavor User Group meeting, was held in Chicago, Illinois, April 15-17. In all, 11 staff from CUL were featured speakers, panel participants, or groups leaders -- 6 of them from CUL technical services. David Banush (CTS) and Nathan Rupp (Mann Library) focused on e-journal maintenance routines in their presentation, entitled "Staying Afloat in a Sea of E-Journals". Marty Kurth (CTS) and Paul McMillin (IRIS/Olin Reference) presented a paper on customizing ENCompass to provide access to electronic resources. Zoe Stewart-Marshall (CTS) talked about the challenge of keeping external links accurate in "Link Checking and Maintenance: Coping with the Avalanche." Scott Wicks (CTS) discussed and demonstrated ITSO CUL, the new online selection tool and ordering tool that recently marked its production debut. And finally, Ed Zieba (CTS) was part of a group presentation on LinkFinderPlus (LFP). He discussed the pros and cons of using third party data for managing the LFP KnowledgeBase and the practical implication for workflows when using the data.

Database Management: Enhancing Access Through Intelligent Solutions, an SCRLC workshop on management of and access to e-resources, featured a number of CTS staff members, including David Banush, Adam Chandler, and Scott Wicks. Phil Davis (Mann Library Collection Development) rounded out the team. The all-day workshop was held April 30 at Steele Memorial Library in Elmira.

Karen Calhoun (Associate University Librarian for Technical Services and Head, CTS) has been very active these past few months. She has completed technical services consulting trips to several university and college libraries in Minnesota and Hong Kong. In addition, she offered her popular "Project Management: Initiation and Planning" class for the third time in the Library Learning Opportunites program; contributed a brief entitled "E-Journal Access Using the Catalog, Federated Search, and Reference Linking Systems" and participated in the invitational CONSER Summit on Serials in the Digital Environment. Karen also made the presentation "Lists, Catalogs and Portals: Models and Tools for Electronic Resource Access" at the Law Librarians of New England's spring meeting in Freeport, Maine. She will be giving two presenations at the ALA annual meeting in Orlando--one at the "Portals Puzzle" program sponsored by the ALCTS Catalog Form and Function IG; and one on technology, process redesign, and the changing role of technical services at the "Acquisitions Technology Trends" program sponsored by the ALCTS AS Technology Committee. The second presentation is in collaboration with Scott Wicks.

Lenore Coral (Music) has been reappointed chair of the Music Library Association Legislations committee. The group is charged with keeping a vigilant eye on any legislation that might affect music libraries and librarians in the U.S.

Marty Kurth (CTS) has recently submitted a paper called "Repurposing MARC metadata: Using digital project experience to develop a metadata management design." The article, co-written with David Ruddy (DLIT) and Nathan Rupp, will appear in Library HiTech. With Diane Hillmann (NSDL/CU Information Science), Marty also taught a course on Information Architecture at Syracuse University's School of Information Studies this past semester.

Jim LeBlanc (CTS) gave a talk entitled "The Ontology of Wrath in 'Counterparts'" at "Traditions and Innovations: The 16th Irregular Miami Joyce Birthday Conference" in Miami in January. He has also been asked to write a review of that conference for the spring issue of the James Joyce Literary Supplement. Jim will be giving another talk on Dubliners at the 19th International James Joyce Symposium in Dublin in June. The title of that talk will be "Being-for-Others in 'Two Gallants': Sycophancy and Symbiosis."

Margaret Nichols (RMC) is serving as chair of the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section of ACRL this year. She has a book review forthcoming in SHARP News, the Newsletter for the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing

Nathan Rupp has been especially active in the past few months. In addition to the work mentioned elsewhere, Nate also gave a presentation at the Digital Library Federation Spring Forum with Joy Paulson (Mann Preservation) called "Opportunities for Collaboration: The HEARTH project" in New Orleans on April 21st.

Elaine Westbrooks (Mann Library) is the co-author, with Diane Hillmann, of Metadata in Practice, a forthcoming volume from ALA Editions.