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Over thirty years after such systems were first developed, the Integrated Library System underlies most operations of an academic library. Yet in the literature, its day-to-day maintenance is often reduced to a list of tasks. Through interviews with sixteen system maintainers, this study attempts to develop an experiential understanding of its maintenance. Findings suggest that most maintainers find such work meaningful but face barriers when colleagues and administrators don't understand what they do well enough to support it. This article proposes steps toward building a workplace where core maintenance tasks are recognized and supported.

Over thirty years after such systems were first developed, the Integrated Library System underlies most operations of an academic library. Yet in the literature, its day-today maintenance is often reduced to a list of tasks. Through interviews with sixteen system maintainers, this study attempts to develop an experiential understanding of its maintenance. Findings suggest that most maintainers find such work meaningful but face barriers when colleagues and administrators don't understand what they do well enough to support it. This article proposes steps toward building a workplace where core maintenance tasks are recognized and supported. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Those of us in libraries like to trace our history to Alexandria or to the French governmental system of record-keeping, but the construction of the modern GLAM world is far more recent, almost as new as coding. It has evolved almost as rapidly. And its future is on us, whether we choose to passively accept a status quo others build or to act and grow and develop ourselves and our workplaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]