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

Citation

Loughridge, B. (1999), "Outsourcing Library Operations in Academic Libraries: An Overview of Issues and Outcomes", Library Management, Vol. 20 No. 8, pp. 447-455. https://doi.org/10.1108/lm.1999.20.8.447.3

Bénaud and Bordeianu (respectively Head of the Catalogue Department and Head of the Serials Cataloguing Department at the University of New Mexico General Library, Albuquerque) point out in their preface that this volume is not a “how‐to” guide to outsourcing but an attempt to review and evaluate the impact of recent developments in outsourcing in the USA, designed to give librarians a general understanding of the issues involved. As they explain in considerable detail, and their extensive bibliography confirms, outsourcing (in general terms the equivalent of contracting out or compulsory competitive tendering in the UK, though there is no suggestion of compulsion in any of the American examples they consider) has become a major and controversial issue in the library and information world in the USA in the 1990s. They define outsourcing as, basically, “... the use of an outside agency to manage a function formerly carried out inside a company” (p. 2), though this may in practice take various forms such as multisourcing (outsourcing contracts with more than one outside contractor), selective outsourcing (outsourcing specific activities), full or total outsourcing (closing down an in‐house activity and transferring it to an outside agency), temporary outsourcing (comparatively short‐term contracts), cosourcing (allowing greater flexibility in contract negotiation) and insourcing (bringing a previously outsourced operation back in‐house).

Although most academic libraries in the USA and elsewhere have been outsourcing at least some of their activities, such as binding, periodicals subscriptions and retrospective cataloguing, for many years, the authors argue that outsourcing “has risen to the top of libraries’ agendas in the 1990s” (p. xvii). They make the good point that outsourcing, as they define it, has historically not been associated only with periods of diminishing budgets and rising costs; indeed, in the more affluent times of the 1970s and early 1980s, American libraries were obliged to outsource some of their activities because they could not recruit appropriately qualified staff in sufficient numbers to cope with increased workloads arising from substantial acquisitions budgets rather than as an attempt to control or reduce costs.

While, historically, outsourcing may have been used to supplement library operations, with non‐core activities being the prime candidates, more recently the outsourcing of such central activities as original cataloguing, inter‐library loans and document delivery, book selection and even reference services has been considered or actually undertaken. The “reengineering revolution” in the business and commercial world, that is, increasing emphasis on core competencies and fundamental and radical reordering of business processes and operations generally, on the one hand, and, on the other, budgetary retrenchment in higher education and the parallel increase in the costs of staffing, services and resources, have led to widespread preoccupation with the possibilities of outsourcing and to several causes celèbres in the American university sector. The pioneering and, perhaps the most controversial, examples, of this have been Wright State University which closed its cataloguing department completely in 1993 and Hawaii State Library’s decision to take an even more radical approach in technical services. The latter is a particularly illuminating example of a public library where the decision in 1995 to outsource or abolish non‐core technical services (automation, acquisitions, selection and cataloguing) and focus on core competencies and customer needs and satisfaction had unexpected and devastating consequences. These included a proposed 35 per cent cut in its budget and a potential 18 per cent reduction in library staff. Following fierce criticism from librarians and the library profession generally contracts with suppliers of outsourced services were eventually cancelled in 1997, the suppliers sued the State of Hawaii, the Hawaii State Library System and its director, and the latter eventually had his contract terminated in 1998. Apart from the economic and management aspects and impacts of outsourcing decisions, discussion of the whole issue has further fuelled the familiar and long‐running debate about what exactly can be identified and defined as the core competencies or activities of libraries, without which they would cease to be libraries.

Noting a backlash against outsourcing in American industry and the life‐cycle of other, in their view, passé terms such as Total Quality Management, information superhighway and ownership versus access, the authors remain non‐committal about the extent to which outsourcing may be seen as a threat to professional librarianship, but do acknowledge that the issue continues to preoccupy information professionals in the USA (and probably elsewhere) and is likely to do so for some time to come.

While much of the detail given in this volume is likely to be more familiar and relevant to American librarians than those in the UK, there is also much food for thought for librarians everywhere. The authors succinctly summarise the advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing and stress that consideration of outsourcing as an option has to be seen as an integral part of library and information services management and decision making, rather than in isolation, with implications for organisational structure, staffing and workflow. The volume is also particularly useful for the extensive bibliography included.