Please Share Experiences re: Outsourcing

[Pat Wallace <DENWALL@AOL.COM>]

I am very happy to see an increase in the number of very thoughtful
posts regarding outsourcing as one aspect of the future of libraries and
the role of professional librarians.  I would like to encourage, as part
of this,  the offering up of examples of all the variations on
outsourcing selections & cataloging (as opposed to more traditional
acquisitions functions such as purchasing,  shipping, barcoding, etc.)
that have been tried as well as in-house alternatives to outsourcing,
i.e. centralized selection/cataloging  within larger school districts and
public library systems.  And they need to be evaluative, lessons-learned
kinds of sharing.  I invite all who have experience along these lines to
share their experience with the rest of us who are interested in the issue
of what will become of our traditional roles as book selectors and
describers of books and other databases in the future.

My intent is to treat the Hawaii phenomenon as the opening salvo in a
move on the part of large corporate vendors like B&T to extend their
outsourcing services to book selection and cataloging and to further extend
the market for such contracts from Academic/Special Libraries to public and
school libraries.  I'm trying to get librarians working in those settings to
give
serious thought to this supposed "wave of the 21st Century" to see if that is
really the direction they think libraries should go in.  Current SLIS
graduate
students at Texas Women's University, which I attend, who take Tech Services

use a text (1994) which does not even have an index reference to
"outsourcing"
and re selection,  simply affirms that that is a core library function.
 There certainly
is a need for ALA or some alternative library leadership to speed up our
thinking
about the attendant issues connected to the rapidly growing desire among
vendors  to take over selection for library clients.

Thanks for your interest.
Patricia D. Wallace
Chair, Hawaii Working Group (ALA Social Responsibility Round Table /
Alternatives in Print Division)
SLIS graduate student, TX Women's University
Denwall@aol.com
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