Outsourcing is a very topical issue in not only the information services industry today but also the whole of the employment industry. The definition of outsourcing, according to the Merriam Webster Online Dictionary is as follows: “to send away (some of a company's work) to be done by people outside the company” (Merriam-Webster, 2014). So effectively, in a management situation where outsourcing is being considered, this is when any work that would or could have been done by the company or parent company is done by an external company instead. Some of today’s workers have been in situations where their jobs have been outsourced, they have been utilised as contractors in an outsourced ...view middle of the document...
He even went so far as to say “Look at the hours of service for JCLS—after three years under privatization they are still pathetic. I would put up my current team of public employees against a private team anytime and anyplace” (Stark, 2011, p.16). So from this we can gather that outsourcing the management of a library has not much in the way of evidential benefit, especially in times of economic constraint.
Outsourcing has also happened in information centres that are attached to big multi-national private corporations as well. This can be seen with Daimler whose Corporate Information and Research Management Department, has outsourced its online research and library content through licensing with an online library portal being developed instead and the actual physical library closing (Petry-Eberle & Bieg, 2009, p.603). So they are basically relying on online databases instead of a traditional information centre per se. Exchanging physical copies of materials for online sources is something that is commonly happening in many information services as technology improves however, it usually does not result in the physical centre for information closing. Utilising online aggregators of databases and journals such as Ebscohost (EBSCO Industries, 2014) is a well-regarded practice and while not typically regarded as outsourcing, is one of the rare examples of it that works well with ready access to information that does not use excessive amounts of physical space.
Even before the recent financial crisis, it appears that some information services were struggling to fulfil their business client’s wishes and chose to resort to outsourcing. This is illustrated by the advent of Business Insight’s (whose parent organisation is the Birmingham Central Library) foray in 2002 into outsourcing business and economic information to public and private companies (Assinder, 2004, p.32). This had a mixed success with not many libraries initialling taking up the service (Assinder, 2004, p.34) looking at the Library of Birmingham’s website today reveals that their business section has gone back to being a primarily free local service (The Library of Birmingham, 2014). This shows the volatile nature of outsourcing services even when they are offering what seems to be a worthwhile service. This in turn, would make any information service wonder about taking up outsourcing services given the nature of this volatility.
So far, it has been proven that for outsourcing to work the information services manager should be very cautious of what they are getting into. If checks are carried out, for example making sure there are enough suppliers to choose from the service and that there are enough resources and time to manage and monitor the contract(Pantry, 2005, p.35)and making sure there no hidden clauses in the contract (p.36), then the information service will be able to concentrate on core functions which is often cited as a main reason for outsourcing in difficult...
