Outsourcing in library and information centres

[Dr.Prabhat Pandey]

what are the benefits and importance of outsourcing of library and information centres services/activities/products and what care to be taken while outsourcing

[Vipin Panday]

In the context of global economy , outsourcing by the big companies is done for giving the services to the users via other than their staff.
(1)in the context of products of library and information centres, from earlier we have been giving a service i.e. ILL, nowdays our services are based on consortium etc. is this the another form of outsourcing?
(2) in the context of services such as translation services is possible through the outsourcing.
outsource person should be related to library science and IT both.

[Kuheli Dutta]

Outsourcing in Library and Information Science means hiring or contracting out side organizations to perform some functions that would otherwise be performed by their in-house library professionals.
Areas of Outsourcing in Library and Information Centres:
1) Cataloguing
2) Selection and Acquisition of materials
3)Management functions
4)Development of Automated library management system,
5)Retrospective conversion etc.


Advantages:
1)More services with reduced cost
2) It helps to hire expertize when in-house staff is not available. For example : in case of translating foreign documents or in case of binding materials etc.
3)Staff are free to provide better reference services if cataloguing or some other library works are being outsourced.
4)Value added services are also available from the cataloguing vendors. Like- Table of contents.
5) Improves uniformity if all the outsourced works (cataloguing, retrospective conversion etc.,) done, following a standard
6) Increases users' satisfaction by providing effective & up to date services in less time


Some points to be considered before outsourcing:
The organization which is outsourcing must instruct the external organization to follow some standard to get quality services.
Outsourcing should be applied to perform some specific Library services according to the need of that particular library but the whole work should not be outsourced. It may devalue the library profession. It should mainly be done to reduce backlogs and to provide effective, efficient & up to date services.
Outsourcing should not be done to reduce employment, it should be done to reduce cost even after providing better services.

[Dr.Prabhat Pandey]

thanx for contributing

[Kuheli Dutta]

My thanks to you Sir for providing such a good topic for discussion. Outsourcing is very common in today's Library and Information Services. But when, where and how it should be applied is a matter of serious discussion.