Search results

The current library outsourcing debate began in 1993 when Wright State University completely outsourced its cataloging operation. It reached a new high in 1995 when the Hawaii State Public Library System decided to outsource its selection, cataloging, and processing functions to Baker & Taylor, its online journals to Information Access Company, and its automation to Ameritech. A steady stream of articles and a handful of books, covering theoretical and ethical issues, as well as the practical aspects of outsourcing, have appeared in the last decade. This bibliography addresses the broad issues of outsourcing, especially in academic libraries. Outsourcing of public, special, and federal libraries is covered only tangentially. The list is divided into four sections: books on outsourcing in libraries; general articles on the history, theory, and impact of outsourcing on libraries and librarianship; opinion pieces; and articles that relate to individual libraries’ experiences with outsourcing.

What has technical services to do with collection development for children's collections—or any other kind of collections for that matter? Isn't technical services what happens after selection decisions and other collection development plans are complete? Don't the technical services staff simply execute the decisions? These questions are familiar to any technical services librarian who ventures across the invisible line into the world of material selection and collection development, and onto the toes of subject specialists, bibliographers, reference or children's specialists, who inhabit that world. They rule their domain with clearly defined credentials supporting their hegemony, largely ignoring the mundane concerns of their technical services colleagues.

City University of New York libraries, when confronted with a university resolution requiring consolidation of the library technical services departments of the 19 colleges into one office, turned to outsourcing of cataloging and acquisitions as a step toward realizing their goal. The processes of determining the needs of the colleges, the cost of technical services, and the locating of an appropriate vendor are described along with the results of their decision.

Exploration and use of Dublin Core metadata tools in a graduate library course, Organization of Information, suggests applications of these tools in similar courses as an introduction to cataloging. Students used the Nordic DC metadata creator to catalog and classify both Internet and traditional information objects. Because links available from the Nordic DC metadata creator and Dublin Core home pages make cataloging resource materials easily available, students had less difficulty integrating their knowledge and those resources to create cataloging records than their counterparts in prior courses did. Practice with the Dublin Core tools, observation of their use by student catalogers, and the potential for gaining experience with more sophisticated tools available in the Cooperative Online Resource Catalog (CORC) project encouraged Bowling Green State University to participate in CORC.