Finch: Hawaii Horror

[Pat Wallace <DENWALL@AOL.COM>]

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

The following message has been cross-posted; please excuse any
duplication
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From: Robert Finch
<rfinch@amon.pub-lib.ci.fort-worth.tx.us>
To: Multiple recipients of list <publib@nysernet.org>
Subject: Hawaii Horror
Date: Jan 7, 1997

Outsourcing of acquisitions by libraries is bad management and
horrible librarianship.  Librarianship is the collection, organization,
storage, and recalling of information for our customers use.
Outsourcing one of  the primary functions of a library is a serious
erosion of the quality of services librarians provide.  The only benefit
of outsourcing a primary function is a short term saving of funds.
In the long term outsourcing will seriously damage our profession.

 Outsourcing of acquisitons is not just a problem in Hawaii.
This plague is infecting libraries all over the country.  One of my
customers calls  it "Blockbusterization".  Every library ends up
with the same collection, the same strengths and the same
weaknesses.

The problem is that the people who work with the collection
are being  removed from the collection development process.
Every day the line managers and reference librarians work
with the collection.  They weed, answer reference questions,
and help customers find materials.  They talk to the customers.
Outsourced collection development cannot possibly provide
quality service.  An intimate knowledge of the collection cannot
be communicated through library profiles no matter how
dedicated or precise the survey.  One library I worked at had the
opinion that it took two years for a librarian to learn the collection.
To expect  years of working experience to be communicated in
several pages of a collection development profile is ludicrous.

If outsourcing is bad management because it removes experienced
and trained people from the process of collection development,
it is also bad  management because collection development is an
important process in learning the collection.  Reading the reviews,
writing up the book orders, prioritizing, and making up the final
selection imprints the materials in the memory of the librarian.
Reading the reviews and receiving the materials blind does not
have the same impact.  In my experience I remember books I order
 much better than books someone else orders and knowledge of
the collection is essential in my job.

This is a "quality vs. budget" management decision.  History has
shown  that it is a bad decision.  Bottom line MBA management
where short  term  savings were favored over long term development
have crippled many other industries.  The recent business
management movement towards "Quality" was an admission
that only considering the bottom line was not an effective way
to manage an organization.  The only argument for outsourcing
collection development is to cut the per item processing cost.
What is lost is quality control over the collection.

Outsourcing gives up one of the primary library functions to
outside organizations.  Outsourcing distances collection
development from the public it is meant to serve.  Outsourcing
magnifies weaknesses in the collection by spreading the same
collection holes over an entire organization.  Outsourcing demeans
the line staff by decreasing their control over their primary work
tools.  However, outsourcing does lower the per item processing
cost.

For the first time public libraries have serious competition from
the private sector, online sources, video rentals, etc.  How we
react will determine our future.  Abdicating control over the
collection and removing collection decisions from the people
closest to our customers cannot increase the quality of our product.
Money is tight and taxes are getting harder to raise, so now is not
the time to reduce our control of our primary resource, the collection.
I have heard it said that a library without librarians is a book warehouse.
I believe that the reverse is also true, a librarian without a library
is unemployed.  Outsourcing our primary duties is a big step
towards unemployment.

-Robert Finch
These opinions are clearly and completely my own.
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