A recent article in Library Information Update (April 2009) caught my eye. The article centres around the outsourcing of information departments in particular a deal worth £50million to outsource a UK law firm’s knowledge and information service to Integreon. Interestingly though, whilst there are clearly cost advantages to be made from an outsourced model, Chris Bull European COO of Integreon sees this as part of a blended solution and not a way to take over from the traditional in house libraries and information services. This to me sounds like a sensible way to look at things, economies of scale for the purchase of information licences for researchers can be achieved through outsourced services. In addition though there are specialist skills, knowledge and relationships that have been built up over the years between in house departments and their internal clients around specific company business.
Interestingly however, when I attended the NGLIS conference last week there was a consistent theme running through the day around the justification of library and information services, the education of end users on the value of the service and how to use it in times when budgets are being cut left right and centre. There is deep concern around the fact that the library information service is seen as an easy resource to cut as apparently most end users can find what they want through Google - or at least they think they can....
TFPL have seen that generally in the market place information departments are facing budget cuts as much as any other business department. Perhaps the savings achieved through outsourcing may be one way to deal with these cuts whilst still maintaining the quality of research needed but is it a cost of lost of key business knowledge as a result?
I was talking with Sylvia James, one of our experienced trainers who was working for us through the last recession. She saw these issues come up then too and wrote a training course around this to help people working in the information service put a financial value on a service that is quite often not very tangible. Sylvia has updated this course for us and we plan to run this very soon. She also wrote an article for the Business Information Review back at the end of 2004 around this subject entitled Valuing Business Information Services.
We are also complementing this training with other courses run by a new trainer Elisabeth Goodman looking at how to educate your end users in information literacy and optimise the skills within your existing team for those who are having to look at budget cuts and organisational re-structure as a result of the cuts. As always we are keen to hear as to how useful these subject areas are for you, all comments and queries are welcome.
Comments