outsourcing

[sean dreilinger]

At 01:27 PM 11/11/99 -0800, someone wrote:
>home pages and is considering outsourcing the libraries page as well. I
>would like your experience on the pros and conso of outsourcing the
>libraries home page. Personally I hope there are more cons then pros but
>I can be convinced otherwise. I'd like a mini survey of how many of the
>lists members maintain their own page and how many  outsource. If you

TECHNICAL

if, as a library, you set your mission along the lines of providing
information, access to information, and teaching customers how to find
information -- there may be many unrelated aspects of web operations that
you can and should outsource to other groups in the university (academic
computing, network operations) or offload to outside companies.

imho the goal is not to give up your mission -- just help keep your
information experts & librarians involved in the creation of content and
presentation of the library services to online customers and *away* from the
potential trap (black hole) of spending insane hours trying to keep up with
rapid changing security, server architecture, network and software
configuration headaches that are required to support a well-run web service.

some organizations are still struggling with a web-services mentality that
would be akin to keeping your own mechanics and highway crew on hand in a
private garage just because some of the web staff `drives cars' -- very
expensive. you still want your people to `drive' but there are web-hosting
and application service providers with armies dedicated to keeping things up
and running -- you would have to reinvent the wheel internally over and over
with endless budget to keep up with the better of the outsource providers.


AESTHETIC

if your outsource decision is more along the lines of visual design, you can
always retain(PAY) selected design groups for initial concepts, and put
proposed designs to a focus group of your current and ideal user
communities. likely you'll find the investment in a style guide and
templates created by a professional design group will pay for itself in
improved perception of the library's e-services among the target audience.

your  library's online presence is competing against other libraries,
commercial information services, and search engines for your customers'
attention and repeat use -- and these competitors are sparing no expense on
making the user experience rewarding and pleasant in every way.

if you want a model for division of labor in web operations, e.g. some ways
to mentally group your web operations and select non-core areas for
outsourcing, here is one from last april:
http://durak.org/sean/pubs/ili/web-rountable/ (first four bullets).

hth - would love to know which way you go and why!
--sean :-)

--
  sean dreilinger    mailto:sean at savvysearch.com    http://www.savvysearch.com/