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For decades academic libraries technical services have adapted to technological advancements and changes in scholarly publishing. Traditional technical services work has decreased as processes were automated (Hertstein, Rabine, & Sweet, 2018). Technical Services departments must proactively identify areas for future growth and metrics for measuring their work. The context and language that these metrics use is vital to their understanding and function. This chapter looks at the usual Technical Services assessment measures and the goals they support. It then considers how these assessments could be reframed in order to support a goal of new service creation in Technical Services. It considers what additional benchmarks could be used as standards and norms to support goals for a future-oriented Technical Services negotiation.

Quality, an abstract concept, requires concrete definition in order to be actionable. This chapter moves the quality discussion from the theoretical to the workplace, building steps needed to manage quality issues.

The chapter reviews general data studies, web quality studies, and metadata quality studies to identify and define dimensions of data quality and quantitative measures for each concept. The chapter reviews preferred communication methods which make findings meaningful to administrators.

The chapter describes how quality dimensions are practically applied. It suggests criteria necessary to identify high priority populations, and resources in core subject areas or formats, as quality does not have to be completely uniform. The author emphasizes examining the information environment, documenting practice, and developing measurement standards. The author stresses that quality procedures must rapidly evolve to reflect local expectations, the local information environment, technology capabilities, and national standards.

This chapter combines theory with practical application. It stresses the importance of metadata and recognizes quality as a cyclical process which balances the necessity of national standards, the needs of the user, and the work realities of the metadata staff. This chapter identifies decision points, outlines future action, and explains communication options.