ACQNET v7n032 (August 24, 1997) URL = http://www.infomotions.com/serials/acqnet/acqnet-v7n032 ISSN: 1057-5308 *************** ACQNET, Vol. 7, No. 32, August 24, 1997 ======================================== (1) FROM: S. Intner (submitted by C. Chamberlain) SUBJECT: RE: Hawaii Outsourcing : Some Answers (129 lines) (2) FROM: E. Cook & S. Strickland SUBJECT: What Happened to Serials in Hawaii? (64 lines) (1)---------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 21 Aug 1997 17:33:39 -0500 (EST) From: Carol Chamberlain Subject: RE: Hawaii outsourcing - forwarded message (S. Intner) ALCTS WORKS FOR US! OPEN ANSWERS FROM AN ALCTS MEMBER TO CHARLES WILLETT'S "OPEN QUESTIONS FOR ALCTS" by Sheila S. Intner, ALA Councilor-at-large & ALCTS Vice-president, President-elect *** The ideas and opinions expressed here are mine and have not been approved or endorsed by any official body. *** SSI. INTRODUCTION On Aug. 12, I received via email "Questions for ALCTS Members: An Open Letter" by Charles Willett, Coordinator of the Alternatives in Print Task Force of the Social Responsibilities Round Table of ALA. Angry at ALCTS' failure to denounce the Hawaii State Librarian, Baker & Taylor, and outsourcing, he framed the statement bitterly. Mr. Willett went on to denounce ALCTS for sins of omission -- insinuating that it did nothing, which is utterly false, as out- going President Chamberlain's statement demonstrates -- and its sins of commission -- ALCTS did educate & inform people about outsourcing, but didn't wage an all-out war against it. THE SHORT ANSWER In my opinion, Mr. Willett, what you wanted ALCTS to do isn't its rightful business. ALCTS isn't for or against outsourcing. ALCTS is for efficient, cost-effective, high-quality collecting, organizing, and preserving library materials, in order to provide quality service to those who use the library. If outsourcing gets these jobs done well, as it has in numerous ways for as long as there has been an ALA, I'm for it. There are no absolutes -- just individual cases of outsourcing that must be evaluated one at a time, depending on what is outsourced and how, why, and what the alternatives are. When one reads and analyzes the Hawaii contract (which those of us Councilors had not been able to do when the issue first came before Council), it was clear it was poorly drawn, but Mr. Willett and AIP didn't ask Council and ALCTS to say that. The resolution AIP wanted Council and ALCTS to approve included language that said outsourcing per se is bad and only collections selected by local librarians are good (preferably, also designating materials selection a "core value" of the profession.) In my opinion, no thoughtful librarian can endorse this. Mr. Willett and AIP still don't seem to want ALCTS to help craft better wordings. He and they seem to prefer testimonials for those whom they designate the "good guys" & against those they designate the "bad guys," or they will bash ALCTS like they bashed the bad guys in Hawaii. I doubt this approach will work with ALCTS or with Council. THE LONGER ANSWER One of ALA's 11 divisions, Association for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS) is associated with activities that frequently are outsourced, such as obtaining library materials, cataloging, binding, etc. But ALCTS is not a political action group with an anti-outsourcing agenda. It is a professional association whose rightful business is (1) educating & informing its members & non-member colleagues about work-related topics; and (2) facilitating creation & dissemination of practical tools. It does business via publications (both print & electronic), interaction at conferences and regional institutes, and the activities of its chapter affiliates. The outsourcing resolution presented to the ALCTS Board unequivocally damned outsourcing and praised locally-performed selection. When the flawed wording was questioned, AIP representative Patricia Wallace, who kindly came to present it & answer questions, said we all knew what it really meant, and didn't clear up the problems. The board voted not to endorse it. (I wouldn't have voted for it either, but that day I couldn't vote because my term of office had not yet begun.) One bad outsourcing contract doesn't make all outsourcing bad. Some local-librarian-selected collections are good, some are not. Working for more than a decade as a collection consultant, I personally have seen local-librarian-selected collections that could have benefited from vendor-selected alternatives. Outsourcing & selection power, by themselves, are neutral. When either of them is done properly, it's good; when either is done badly, it isn't. Who performs the work or where it's done doesn't assure goodness or badness. Why didn't ALCTS support AIP's anti-outsourcing resolution? Simple. It wasn't -- & isn't -- supportable by librarians who catalog with OCLC (or RLIN, or WLN), collect materials via approval plans (including Baker & Taylor's), bind books and journals with commercial binders, subscribe to journals via EBSCO, Turner, or Faxon, etc. or exercise other opportunities to move the more mechanical aspects of our work to cheaper venues. When the goals of selection are sharply & clearly defined, selection of individual titles can be merely a matter of matching against the selection parameters, which shouldn't require the attention of local librarians to do. But the Hawaii contract failed to define selection goals, failed to insure that local needs could be met, if necessary, by alternative means, failed to give local librarians opportunities for input before the contract was signed, & failed to allow local librarians the right to ask for corrections if problems emerged. Even all of this still doesn't justify the unfortunate wording of the AIP resolution. It seems to me that if AIP wants support for its resolutions, it needs to listen AND RESPOND to objections raised by potential supporters. It wasn't surprising that the take-it-or-leave-it attitude I observed in San Francisco didn't produce the desired support. MORE ANSWERS To answer your questions about where ALCTS has been -- it's been working hard doing its rightful business for its members. And from what I saw in San Francisco, it is succeeding wildly. How do I measure success? I measure it in terms of participation. The ALCTS Membership Meeting/President's Program drew so many people the hotel filled a second ballroom accommodating the overflow crowd. That's success to me. ALCTS should educate and inform librarians about outsourcing via conference & regional programs on the subject & publications, which is what out-going President Carol Chamberlain described in her June 6 statement. What ALCTS should NOT do is meddle in one library's affairs, or unilaterally, without invitation, interfere in fights between library directors & their staffs, or between libraries & their vendors. Sheila S. Intner, ALA Councilor-at-large & ALCTS Vice-president, President-elect (2)---------------------------------------------------------------- >On Thu, 21 Aug 1997, ELEANOR COOK wrote: > Hello Stephanie, > > I am the editor of ACQNET, one of the lists that has been > documenting the Hawaii Outsourcing situation. I attended the > Hawaii Working Group panel discussion at ALA in San > Francisco and saw you speak. The whole panel was quite > interesting. > As a serials librarian, I have a nagging question that I am > surprised no one has asked: what happened to periodical > subscriptions? Surely the HSPLS has some periodical subscriptions > somewhere - _Time_, _Newsweek_, or something -- and Baker & Taylor is > certainly NOT a serials vendor. So did you all continue to use a > serials vendor or did you cancel all the subscriptions? Surely > the HSPLS administration addressed this but if they did, we never > heard the details. At the panel discussion at ALA I heard about > how B & T almost totally ignored reference standing order > serial titles and that did not surprise me, since they are not > known for handling those kinds of materials anyway. > I would like to post some info. about this on ACQNET and > SERIALST so if you could give me some appropriate info. or > direct me to who could, I would appreciate it. > > Thanks so much, > Eleanor Cook > Editor, ACQNET > ************************************************************ > Eleanor I. Cook 704-262-2786 (wrk) > Serials Specialist 704-262-2773 (fax) > Belk Library > Appalachian State University > Boone, NC 28608 cookei@appstate.edu > ************************************************************* Date: Thu, 21 Aug 1997 16:36:11 -1000 (HST) From: Stephanie Strickland (HSPLS) Subject: Re: Question about the B & T Outsourcing for Serials Aloha Eleanor, Glad you asked this question. You are absolutely right about nothing being mentioned about it. When everything was either being abolished or downsized, the State Librarian decided to cut periodical subscriptions. Every branch library, regardless of size, had to cut their number of subscriptions to 50, including newspaper subscriptions. The regional libraries had to cut theirs' to 100. The main library, Hawaii State Library, cut their budget in half. Waikiki cut from 162 to 50. The State Librarian decided to subscribe to IAC. His selling point was that we would be getting full text on a number of items so why bother with subscriptions? This tends to work better in a school or academic setting. Some libraries have large numbers of students. Waikiki does not. Our patrons want to read a magazine, not an article on a computer screen. EBSCO is our vendor. We also deal directly with some vendors. This selection was never outsourced. Hope this answered some of your questions. If not, you know where to find me. Stephanie Strickland Branch Library Manager Waikiki-Kapahulu Public Library ****** END OF FILE ****** ACQNET, Vol. 7, No. 32 ****** END OF FILE ******