Outsourcing Library Operations in Academic Libraries: : An Overview of Issues and Outcomes

Citation

Morgan, S. (1999), "Outsourcing Library Operations in Academic Libraries: : An Overview of Issues and Outcomes", Library Review, Vol. 48 No. 6, pp. 55-56. https://doi.org/10.1108/lr.1999.48.6.55.17

“Outsourcing has risen to the top of libraries′ agendas in the l990s”. This is the first sentence of the book′s introduction. How accurate a statement it is, is rather debatable. It may be true for libraries in the US, but less so for those in the UK. Nevertheless, this volume, jointly authored by two people with a cataloguing background from the University of New Mexico, offers the reader a snapshot of the state of outsourcing in academic libraries (in the US) today, as the subtitle suggests. What it is not is a practical guide to “how‐to‐outsource‐parts‐of‐your‐library‐service”. However, the authors do take a thorough and perceptive look at the processes surrounding the topic. The ten chapters follow a logical sequence by providing an overview, then focusing on academic libraries, planning, implementing and managing outsourcing, looking at survey results of outsourcing activities and then addressing particular outsourcing areas such as collection development, acquisitions, journals management, cataloguing and retrospective conversion. As someone who has had very little experience of outsourcing (or, as one definition would have it “a fancy term for having someone else do your work”), I found the first chapter particularly enlightening. It is strong on the key concepts and rationale of the activity. Moving in on academic libraries, the second chapter gives a brief history and then advantages and disadvantages of going down the outsourcing road. An interesting view is given from the perspective of the individual who loses his/her job as a result. This is followed by the one chapter dealing with practicalities: planning (with a great emphasis on the economic factors), implementing and managing the process. In 1996 the authors surveyed over 200 academic libraries to find out how deeply outsourcing had become embedded in the libraries′ operations. Chapter 4 discusses the findings including the paradox of some libraries wanting to outsource but not having the funding to support the activity, whilst others are making substantial savings as a result of the process. Chapters 5 through to 9 go into some detail about the technical services which attract most outsourcing activity covering the areas outlined above. Preservation is addressed in Chapter 10 including binding, microfilming, photocopying and digitisation. At the end of the book the authors have helpfully provided a list of suggested readings ‐‐ over 250 of them, in fact ‐‐ together with a very detailed index.

This book is very easy to read given the sometimes technical nature of the subject and the tendency towards acronym‐overload one of the reasons for this is the way that the text is suitably segmented into bite‐size chunks for easier digestion. This coupled with the smooth fluency of the writing make it a useful updating text for academic library managers and technical services staff, in particular.