DIY Librarian

At SLA, Stuart Basefsky presented a proposal for the Personal Information Trainer (PIT). A PIT is an employee benefit reserved for key individuals within an organization. The idea is to change the librarian from a cost center to a valued employee benefit, and the perception of the library from a free service to a valued service. Basefsky made a comparison to bottled water—it is essentially the same thing as free tap water, yet we pay a premium for it.

Basefsky stressed that the PIT would still be available to and provide services to everyone in the organization, but he admitted that the idea might still go against the ingrained egalitarianism shared by most librarians.

Heidi Yacker and John Ganly provided insightful commentary and questions about Basefsky’s proposal, and then the audience and presenters entered into a lively discussion. Ganly said he thought the PIT idea, startling as it may seem to some, is not really a new idea but rather a return to “human presence” in libraries. He added that the problem with outsourcing is the loss of the “cultural ethos” of the organization.

Kudos to Basefsky for bringing a bold proposal to SLA, and to the session organizers for the format. I’d love to see more responders at presentations next year.

Constraining Public Libraries: The World Trade Organization’s General Agreement on Trade in Services, reviewed in the April 15 Library Journal, cautions libraries about applying business models, fees for services, privatization, and outsourcing in light of GATS. While reviewer John Berry says that “some readers will find this book alarmist,” he concludes that the book “provides an increasingly rare and thoughtful discussion of certain aspects of library management, such as the tendency toward privatization, to which the profession should pay more attention.”

Outsourcing makes many people shudder. But can we really explain why it’s so bad?

In the latest Cites & Insights, Walt Crawford points to a post about measuring staff time at The Other Librarian. In the post, Ryan Deschamps argues that just measuring the staff time it would take to complete a project in-house is not relevant. The only relevant measure is the time the staff person would be away from other valuable projects. In other words:

If you’d be taking that staff person away from a really valuable project, then I’d say you are justified in outsourcing. If that staff is just twiddling his or her thumbs then you are losing lots.

Deschamps brings up other issues too, such as the knowledge gained by doing work in-house, and the usability and maintainability of the system.

So, outsourcing is not inherently bad, but I think in many cases libraries turn to outsourcing without evaluating the true costs and benefits.

Of course, some things are just better done locally. Pasadena Now has been making headlines by outsourcing coverage of local meetings to journalists in India. This might seem to make financial sense, but I think it makes very little common sense to me. (Then again, it might not make financial sense either. I’ve known a lot of local newspaper correspondents, and they weren’t always making any more than the Indian journalists mentioned in the article.)