Library Outsourcing Controls Costs Article

[Clifford Urr]

     Today's Washington Post (8/4/97) has, in the business section, p. 10, 
     an article entitled, "Library Manager LSSI Adds a Calif. System to Its 
     Collection." LSSI stands for Library Services and Systems, a librray 
     outsource contractor that seems comprised of librarians and systems 
     types. The article is about their takeover and management of the 
     Riverside County public library system in California, and implies this 
     is the wave of the future for public libraries. What's especially 
     interesting is that the salaries for the library employees for the 
     county is the same with this contractor, library hours were increased, 
     and LSSI agreed to do $200,000.00 worth of improvements to the system. 
     They do it by streamlining admin functions and using various methods 
     of making operations more efficient.
     
     A VP for this company is quoted as saying in the article, "with more 
     than 33,000 libraries nationwide, the library management marketplace 
     is a $10 billion industry with great possibilities" for library 
     outsourcers. Since he does not distinguish what types of libraries, I 
     wonder if other types are not far behind for outsourcing picking: 
     academic and corporate libraries (government libraries seem to be one 
     by one getting picked up the outsourcers.) 
     
     Comments?
     
     Cliff Urr, Senior Manager, Information Services, Aspen Systems
     2277 Research Blvd. MS-2A
     Rockville, MD 20850
     1-301-519-5828
     curr at aspensys.com