Outsourcing In Libraries: Literature Review And Best Practices

Innovative Approaches to Collection Management

The central and local government of the United Kingdom has interest in the outsourcing of public sector services, which is manifested in libraries by encouragement of private/public sectors through various schemes such as Private Finance Initiative (PFI) and Public Private Partnerships (PPP). These approaches can be helpful in providing new possibilities in funding for public service provision.

Outsourcing in other public sector organizations like central government or academic institutions may follow different models or enhanced cross-sectoral collaboration proposed new regional and national cultural frameworks that will place more emphasis to identify issues of the priorities of cultural management.

The objectives of this literature view are:

• To focus on core activities
• To reduce cost

Throughout 1980s American-style initiatives for privatization were introduced less rapidly civil servants where as these were eagerly adopted by ministers. Services like government and public libraries remain unchanged because of the unavailability of suitable external supplier. Since later 90s a number of significant developments can be seen which can be listed as:

• Labour Government policy which replaced Compulsory Competitive training (referred to appendix).
• Reorganization of local governments
• Cutbacks on universal funding and focusing on core services
• Links between the libraries and educational sectors become much closer.
• Increment in the purchase of libraries
• Climate promoting partnerships like Public Private Partnerships (PPT) and Private Finance Initiative (FPI).

From late 1990s Outsourcing became a trend in the libraries however, practices were not stated as outsourcing but various practices became common for years like retro-conversion projects, Library of Congress cards, computer maintenance and book approval plans (Brown 2014). Holley (2013) stated that the primary focus of outsourcing is copying catalogue and it has useful practices in computer services, document delivery and processing shelf-ready materials. Mwai, Kiplang and Gichoya (2014) explained that libraries might have long contracted out some of the operations like photocopying including outsourcing of collection and preservation development. Outsourcing technical services has become new trend in the libraries which is replacing the traditional functioning of libraries in UK and passing the responsibilities to the vendors (Jaguszewski & Williams, 2013). The profession in the library needs to understand that outsourcing has become the business practice nowadays. Different libraries adopt outsourcing in different varieties like special and public libraries are adopting it rapidly whereas academic libraries are lagging behind in this adoption (Das, 2015). Wang et al. (2013) proposed a “Library Outsourcing Decision Matrix” in which folklore processes was eliminated and legal, background processes and government were given to candidates for outsourcing. They also explained that priority processes like effectiveness, identity processes and major operations like processes in which future of organization rests needs to be handled in-house not outsourced.

According to Grith et al. (2012) the purpose of implementation of outsourcing in libraries is to focus on core competences and cut the costs involving re-engineering and restructuring in order to gain competitive advantage. One of the major problems in outsourcing for libraries in UK is seems to be is that libraries do not know their costs which may result in difficulty to accurately determination of money saved (Pandya, 2012).

Outsourcing in Libraries: History and Current Trends

Perunovic, Christoffersen & Mefford (2012) stated three phases which are commonly used in process of outsourcing:

According to Mishra and Mahanty (2014) it can be noted that outsourcing should not be tactic for reducing cost rather it should be component of larger process re-engineered project. Many UK libraries have already invested in big amount in planning the stage to find “when they want to tender, that there was no interest from vendors” (Corral, Kennan & Afzal, 2013).

This can be the most disruptive phase in the process of outsourcing for library that involves introducing new routines, rearranging work flows and learning new systems (Xiodan, 2013). It is an intense phase but should not last long.

Responsible management of outsourcing is the real issue in managing the outsourcing for library (Ishika & Blakiston, 2012). The ongoing processes like troubleshooting and monitoring can keep on once outsourcing contract is established in a library.

In libraries domain including health, higher education, public, and special libraries, total documented spend estimated is £ 1.3bn per annum and almost 55% across the staffing expenditure and board at £694m. Further estimation cost reached to £1.6bn including education and commercial libraries. Whole-service outsourcing might be economically attractive to suppliers however it may not be cost effective for relatively small contracts which are still subject to   (EC) Procurement directives for an individual’s activity. Aggregation and whole-service outsourcing through co-operatives and consortia can be solution to the problem of granularity. Between small and large public library authorities there is significant inter-organizational outsourcing. Ten percent of higher education libraries have externalized their library services in organization during the time of project building however; there is no evidence of any extensive commercial activities by such organizations in supplying services to the libraries.

Overview of library expenditure by sector (£ million sterling)

The table describes size of annual spend domain which is £1,296m total.

As data collected from 1990 to 2000 total expenditure estimated was £848m among which represented employee costs was about 55% material expenditure and the income was less than 10% of expenditure. Based on the findings notable objectives are:

• Authority-wide policies can be helpful in determining the destination of spending in many areas.
• A proportion of the spending may be outsourced already.
• Degree of fragmentation is high with potentially low rewards.

Average annual income of library of the university excluding sizeable grants for equipments research and other investments is £418k that is £23.70 per head. Large proportion of this income was from photocopying, fines and “sales” and income from commercial activities derived was from less than £19k which is increasing constantly. This gives a scope of seeing users of library as an asset.

Conclusion:

Based on the above report it can be concluded that outsourcing is significant feature  library domain. The culture of contract management and tendering has become embedded in libraries. The inhibitors for outsourcing, generally the granularity of concerns in many sectors about the effects of arm’s length delivery of service. A number of cross-domain regional, and individual activities can be identified suitable candidates for outsourcing as a number of mechanisms to foster a climate in hospitable to outsource.

References:

Brown, F. (2014). Outsourcing Law Firm Libraries to Commercial Law Library and Legal Research Services. The UK Experience. Australian Academic & Research Libraries, 45(3), 176-192.

Corrall, S., Kennan, M. A., & Afzal, W. (2013). Bibliometrics and research data management services: Emerging trends in library support for research. Library trends, 61(3), 636-674.

Das, M. A. (2015). Outsourcing of library services in amravati city: a case study. Global Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies, 4(6), 55-62.

Holley, R. (2013). Cataloger, editor, and scholar: Essays in honor of Ruth C. Carter. Routledge.

Ishizaka, A., & Blakiston, R. (2012). The 18C’s model for a successful long-term outsourcing arrangement. Industrial Marketing Management, 41(7), 1071-1080.

Jaguszewski, J., & Williams, K. (2013). New roles for new times: Transforming liaison roles in research libraries.

Mishra, D., & Mahanty, B. (2014). The effect of onsite-offshore work division on project cost, schedule, and quality for re-engineering projects in Indian outsourcing software industry. Strategic Outsourcing: An International Journal, 7(3), 198-225.

Mwai, N. W., Kiplang’at, J., & Gichoya, D. (2014). Application of resource dependency theory and transaction cost theory in analysing outsourcing information communication services decisions: A case of selected public university libraries in Kenya. The Electronic Library, 32(6), 786-805.

Pandya, M. (2012). Cloud computing for libraries: A SWOT analysis.

Perunovi?, Z., Christoffersen, M., & Mefford, R. N. (2012). Deployment of vendor capabilities and competences throughout the outsourcing process. International Journal of Operations & Production Management, 32(3), 351-374.

Wang, C., Ren, K., Wang, J., & Wang, Q. (2013). Harnessing the cloud for securely outsourcing large-scale systems of linear equations. IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, 24(6), 1172-1181.

Xiaodan, D. Y. L. W. W. (2013). An Analysis on the Key Factors of Quality Control About the Cataloging Outsourcing of Library——A Case Study of Dalian Medical University Library [J]. Research on Library Science, 8, 010.

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