Generally speaking, the field of librarianship is an incredibly friendly one. Those who experienced in libraries are happy to share their knowledge with new comers. Librarians, as a whole, are not afraid to evolve and engage with technology, current trends, and changing thoughts. As an MLIS student, I have found the colleagues I work with beyond helpful. They have encouraged me to submit papers and have even invited me to work on papers/presentations with them. Why then, is there a subconscious division between "front office" and "back office" -- in other words, public services and technical services?
Public and technical services are separate branches of the same tree. Perhaps, to be more specific, public services would be the branches while technical services would be the roots. Technical services provides what the library needs to survive -- information and access to that information. Public services takes what tech has gathered and ensures patrons understand how to access it.
Public services get a lot of the glory. They deal one-on-one with the public and are often viewed as "the" librarians. Meanwhile, tucked away in the back of the library, tech services works tirelessly maintaining the library's collection. They purchase, process, include/exclude, make decisions on weeding, and maintenance. Their job is vital to access services and librarians. These groups cannot do their job if tech services has not done theirs.
So, yes, public and technical services are separate areas, but are both important links in the information chain between patrons and the material. Knowing these important roles and how they interconnect, is why the international cataloging community continuously works to improve cataloging practices across the board.
As Keneen pointed out, Resource Description and Access (RDA) was developed as a hope to:
• provide a more flexible standard that can be used by information communities beyond the library;
• remove cultural bias to better enable use globally;
• support the clustering of bibliographic records to show relationships between resources and their creators to make users more aware of the variety of different editions, translations and physical formats available; and
• provide guidance for describing digital resources, optimize the use of the library catalog and improve searching and browsing for users.
Barrette found herself in the "backroom" of a law library doing technical services. Only when trying to fix a public services issue did she realize they were one and the same. "Without question the one thing I recall most vividly from my library school technical services class... is that 'technical services is public service' ... no matter what we call our services- public, technical, access, or something else-and no matter where we perform them, they are all 'public services'" (Barrette, 2011).
Making improvements on the technical side decreases the information access barrier allowing public side to more easily find information. In the end, that is what it is all about, getting the right information into the hands of all patrons.
References
Barrette, L. (2011).Technical services IS public service, or how I got out of the back room and why you should too.16(2), 20–. Retrieved from https://commons.law.famu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1001&context=library-facpub.
Keenan, Teressa M. “Resource Description and Access: Cataloging Standards Affect Reference Service.” Reference Services Review 42:3 (2014): 446-466. Retrieved from https://scholarworks.umt.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1017&=&context=ml_pubs&=&sei-redir=1&referer=https%253A%252F%252Fscholar.google.com%252Fscholar%253Fq%253DResource%252BDescription%252Band%252BAccess%253A%252BCataloging%252BStandards%252BAffect%252BReference%252BService.%2526hl%253Den%2526as_sdt%253D0%2526as_vis%253D1%2526oi%253Dscholart#search=%22Resource%20Description%20Access%3A%20Cataloging%20Standards%20Affect%20Reference%20Service.%22.
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