Matt Martin is the Chief of the Collections Management Division at the Library of Congress.
Tell us who you are and what brought you to the library.
I started at the Library back in 2016. I had spent the first 12 years of my career in various logistics management roles with the US Army and US Coast Guard. My first position at the Library was with the Integrated Support Services Directorate (ISS) as the Chief of Logistics Services. It’s a little embarrassing knowing what I know now, but when I first applied for that position, I thought I would be coming to the Library to help manage storage and distribution of books. It wasn’t until I started the interview process that I quickly realized that was not the case. That first job was an amazing opportunity for me to come and learn about the Library. My role was to lead a Division that supported all of the Library in everything from major facility projects down to individual parking approvals. It really helped me to get a feel for all aspects of the Library’s work from CRS (Congressional Research Service), to Copyright, to LCSG (Library Collections and Services Group).
I spent considerable time working with the team in the Collections Management Division (CMD) during my time in ISS. That’s where I learned that they were the actual people that got to manage the storage and distribution of books. When a temporary detail position opened for the Assistant Chief role in 2020, I jumped on it. I was fortunate enough to be hired into that role permanently in 2021 and have been with CMD ever since. When the Chief role opened up last year, I knew it was something I wanted to pursue right away so I am really excited that my next opportunity is right here in CMD.
What are some of your standout projects?
I have gotten to work on a number of really fun and impactful projects over the last 10 years. It is pretty easy to think back and cherry pick some of the more recent ones but in my early days at the Library I got to help plan and execute the move of supplies and collections out of a 40-year-old storage facility and I got to update and standardize the Library’s fleet of material handling equipment. More recently I was here to open Module 6 at our Fort Meade Offsite Storage Facility and have been part of the entire planning process for Module 7 that will open this summer. I implemented the Library’s first modern automated sortation system, I was part of the team that developed the Library’s new offsite storage inventory management system, FETCH, and was part of the Library’s recent transition to (our latest Integrated Library System) FOLIO.
What does a typical day look like for you?
We joke a lot here that there is no such thing as a typical day. What makes the Collections Management Division so great is that we have 82 staff that retrieve collections from both onsite and offsite storage locations, run circulation stations, update inventory records for collections, transport/move collections around all of our facilities, install and remove shelving, and so many other jobs. As Chief, that means that any day I could be meeting with staff from within our Division or across the Library on any and all of those topics. No two days are the same, and that’s what makes it exciting to come to work every day.
What do you enjoy doing outside of work?
My life outside of work is really dedicated to my family. I spend most of my time taking my kids to various activities, coaching sports, and visiting family back in Pennsylvania. We have season tickets to the Pittsburgh Steelers, so making the trip back to Pittsburgh a few times a year is always on the schedule.
What project/event are you working on that you would like to share with us?
One of the big projects we are working on is updating our onsite collection inventory records. We have more than 23 million items in the General Collections, most of which are stored in the Adams and Jefferson buildings on our Capitol Hill campus. While we have bibliographic records for nearly every single one of them, in a lot of cases (millions of cases) we do not have item records. This impacts nearly everything we do, including, how long it takes to retrieve an item, how and what we are able to check out, and how we manage space.
It is a problem that our entire Division has a hand in correcting, from the staff that identify collections that need records, to the staff that create the records, those that help solve some of the more complicated cataloging problems, and those that help move those items to processing rooms and back to their shelf locations.
When you are dealing with the scale we have, every single decision that is made can have a pretty big impact. For example, one of the tiniest things that was done back when the Library first started tracking records in our Voyager database in the early 2000s was to place a tiny dot on the barcode label of an item whose item record had been created. This means that with a very quick visual check our staff can identify items that have not been added to the ILS and route them to the proper processing area. This simple decision has allowed us to be extremely efficient as we review books on our shelves without having to scan each one to confirm.
Overall the project is going to take several years to complete, but every single day we are adding item records to our ILS, making them easier for patrons to find in our catalog and making it easier for us to serve them.
What is something your co-workers may not know about you?
A few might know this, but I recently started my classes for my MLIS degree with San Jose St Univ. I’m working on my second course this summer, and excited to finish the program in the next 3-4 years.