A TALE OF TWO LIBRARIES: THE MERGING OF THE MEDICAL UNIVERSITY OF OHIO LIBRARY DATABASE WITH THE UNIVERSITY OF TOLEDO LIBRARIES DATABASE

The Medical University of Ohio and The University of Toledo were merged on July 1, 2006. After nine months of hard work, the merging of their integrated library systems was completed on March 31, 2007. In addition to the successful merging of the ILSs, the Technical Services staffs of both libraries were combined. This paper discusses the activities involved and the stages developed in order to merge the libraries' integrated library systems as well as the technical services staff of both libraries with as little pain or disruption to services as possible. These merging activities included but were not limited to: preparation of documentation for distribution to key team members, such as the systems librarian, head of bibliographic control and the access services assistant; development of a 6 month planning stage prior to work being done in either integrated library system in order to minimize potential manual record cleanup; the actual merging of the integrated library systems and the Technical Services staffs and finally, the re-structuring of the Technical Services Department for the University Libraries of The University of Toledo that incorporated the policies and procedures of a medical library with those of a traditional academic library.