In light of the discussions about "outsourcing" of library services which
took place on this list recently, some folks might be interested in a report
of comments made by Michael Gorman, Library Director at California State, at
an ALA panel presentation last month:
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2) Outsourcing: Three reasons explain why it is a terrible idea
a) it abandons a library's control of the database of its own collection
b) it loses important human access, human expertise -- outsourcing
is a desperate remedy for management failure, not the criticism
of catalogers
c) most importantly, you abandon the principle that each library
should make a contribution to the national network.
It must be very hard for the futurist to come to terms with the fact
that pre-electronic humans such as librarians have devised intricate and
highly effective methods to locate, identify, and make complex
accumulations of recorded data.
It seems to me that it's possible to preserve the best we have and
apply the technique of bibliographic control, in which librarians are
uniquely qualified, to the chaotic net.
=======================================
(These opinions were stated during a program called "Crisis in Subject
Cataloging and Retrieval," held at the ALA Conference in Chicago, on June
25, 1995. The program was planned by the ALCTS/CCS Subject Analysis
Committee and co-sponsored by the RASD Catalog Use Committee. For the full
text of the program report, send the command
GET CRISIS95 REPORT
to: listserv@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu
------------------------------------ * *
Alva T. Stone, Head of Cataloging * *
FSU Law Library, Tallahassee FL 32306-1043 * *
fax: 904-644-5216 *
tel: 904-644-2881 "I'd rather be birding."
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