Management and Leadership Discussion #4: Outsourcing
10 March 2024
For this exercise, select an aspect of a library and discuss if all or part has been outsourced, defunded, or eliminated in recent years. Go beyond the examples in the text and provide your own sources. Your example does not have to be a negative one. It could also recognize cost saving or efficiency. What changes have there been in circulation, technical services, reference, special collections, reader’s advisory services, library instruction, etc. over the last 5 or so years? After providing your description, reflect on what this might mean for job opportunities in your area of interest.
From my understanding, one of the most persistent sources of anxiety for librarians today stems from the apparently increasingly looming threat of position downscaling and outsourcing, an anxiety that is rightfully nursed. Not least of these reasons are the sweeping changes brought by the nigh-complete digitization of the library landscape—automation obviated legions of in-house circulation paraprofessionals at the turn of the millennium, setting a precedent that leaves positions liable for elimination at the drop of some “revolutionary” technology. Combined with the tangibly tightening constraint of shrinking budgets, fears of long-established LIS positions being cut and patched on in with employees from private third-party organizations can only grow.
Despite the furor over outsourcing now, in the past, some of these changes were apparently quietly accepted, if not welcomed. Woodward (2013) cites vendor Baker & Taylor’s streamlining of materials selection as a prime example, and further lists other support services that have been outsourced, including accounting, web design, and database development. (p. 32). However, while these services provide the structural support for library operations, there is one service that, while not strictly falling under the definition of outsourced, manages to encompass all these circumstances: eBooks and eMaterials.
It's easy to understand why eBooks would be welcomed in libraries: for a service that largely strives to be as convenient as possible, wouldn’t providing materials that patrons can access without having to visit a specific location be the most convenient method? Once the distancing measures necessitated by the pandemic forced libraries to close their doors, eMaterials of all kinds would seem outright necessary when patrons were reluctant to even step outside of their homes. Convenient as they might be, the widespread adoption of eMaterials did not come without significant costs—pricing being the most obvious of these, but the increase itself is a byproduct of the real loss: libraries ownership of the materials they purchase. As Gross (2021) explains simply, “publishers do not sell their e-books or audiobooks to libraries—they sell digital distribution rights to third-party vendors, such as OverDrive,” who then sell lending rights to libraries, at significantly higher prices than physical materials. As the ALA reported in 2019, a conventional fiction novel from a bestselling author cost only $12.99 for consumers’ “unlimited” access—while libraries would be charged $51.99 for two years or $519.99 for twenty-year’s license to one copy lendable to one patron at a time (p. 3).
Moran and Morner’s (2017) define outsourcing as “purchasing from an outside source certain services or goods [an] organization previously provided for or produced itself” (p. 226). While no library, save prestige academic institutions, has ever had the specializations and resources to publish and distribute eBooks, I would argue the changes in the landscape forced libraries to increasingly adopt eMaterials, which subsequently adds significant expenditures to library budgets, which in turn continues to reduce staffing levels at physical locations. Perhaps this development is somewhat tangential to the increasing precarity that leads to outsourcing of staff, but it is important to note that these phenomena are not occurring independently of each other.
References
American Library Association. (2019, October 15). Competition in digital markets. https://www.ala.org/news/sites/ala.org.news/files/content/mediapresscenter/CompetitionDigitalMarkets.pdf
Gross, D. A. (2021, September 2). The surprisingly big business of library e-books. The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-communications/an-app-called-libby-and-the-surprisingly-big-business-of-library-e-books
Moran, B. B. & Morner, C. J. (2018). Library and information center management (9th ed.). Libraries Unlimited.
Woodward, J. (2013). The transformed library: E-books, expertise, and evolution. ALA Editions.