| From
Glen Gustafson: Pillsbury
Outsourcing: An After the Fact Observation
Having just left one law firm for a new position at
Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy, I was recently reminded that my position with the
firm is "at will". As disappointed as the library community is about the choice
that Pillsbury made, the Pillsbury Library Partners, Managing Partners, Executive
Directors, Human Resources personnel, and Library Manager have chosen a clean sweep path
to January 2000. At will employment allows our employers to do that. We come back to the
essence of librarianship. It may have only taken three or four semesters of graduate work
to be awarded a Masters in Library Science, but, it takes a lifetime of continuing
education and profession development to keep on top of the game. Regular communication
with your firm's administrative chain of command is also a good idea. Remind that command
and control system that you are a valuable asset to the knowledge management that the firm
relies upon to keep your attorneys furnished with the information that they need to keep
their competitive edge.
As I reviewed Janice Hammond's apologia, there are several
points with which I take exception. I note that in the 1980s there were as many as 22
people on the library staff. If that is the number on staff at the San Francisco office,
and if the staff then was allowed to dwindle to six, there is either a problem with staff
retention, or, the reduction was a calculated effort to cut costs and increase
productivity. Having just come from a shop with a staffing ratio greater than one library
staff member for each fifty attorneys (1:50), I understand how library maintenance and
reference staffing can begin to resemble a sausage stuffing production. After the first
400 sausages, you really don't focus on how to make the sausages better, you just focus on
grinding out the next 400 followed by the next 400.
Technology projects are time intensive, and are partly
based on the good fortune of having a new generation of software appear on the scene just
as you need to make the next technological leap. Gathering information about the new
systems and planning whole office integration is not something that you do after the
sausages are shipped. If there is a perceived end of the timeline of January 2000, there
is precious little time to maintain the routine systems and services, and to complete the
technological transition. It seems to me that the library staffing question should have
been addressed sooner. But then, I am reminded of search notices I have seen in the past.
You have probably seen one that read something like this: Seeking Senior Librarian, must
speak three modern European languages, plus Greek or Latin. Will catalog according to
AACR2 and must have intimate knowledge of the Library of Congress reading room. Will
conduct reference for 100 tenured faculty, and must be a NASCAR certified driver. Salary =
$30,000. When the search team can't locate such a stellar individual, they opt for Fred,
the guy who does such a great job in the copy center. Fred then struggles through
cataloging the EU collection with great finesse. How likely is that scenario.
So, given the fact that library staff recruiting had not
achieved the desired result, what were the options reviewed by Pillsbury in planning for
the new library structure and systems. The four options were; 1) To handle the transition
in-house, 2) To use a partial outsourcing, 3) Project outsourcing and 4) Total
outsourcing. Let's eliminate two of the options quickly. 1) In House: This would require
the Human Resources personnel to recruit a project team to quickly implement the
transition. For one reason or another, this option was not chosen. If I had to guess, one
of the reasons would be cost. To effectively complete this kind of a project the firm
would have to recruit a Librarian/Technical Services hybrid team, not something that you
can pick up at the local basketball court.
The other option that I would have rejected right away, is
the Total Outsourcing option. The first thing that this option does is to hamper the
Outsourcing company with having to bring in talented staff to keep the day to day
functions in full operation, plus find the technical team to select the systems and
implement the changes. That is not a 40 hour per week effort, given the drop dead
deadline.
By now you may have guessed that I would have preferred a
mix of Partial Outsourcing and Project Outsourcing. Here is a suggestion off the top of my
head. Six staff members to keep the workflow going. One staff member to coordinate with
the firm's architectural team. Three staff members to select and implement the new
technology. As with the building trades, the firm must select the general contractor well.
The general contractor is then responsible for the work done by each of the
sub-contractors. I see no problem with mixing outsourced subs and in-house staff
throughout the chain of command. Worrying about who has rank and what benefits they have
would have been a moot question once the chain of command was established. Substituting
players in as needed is something that the general contractor should be able to handle.
If the library management software system is selected from
an off-the-shelf provider, implementation is merely a question of hours applied to the
project. Worrying about the loss of knowledge when the Outsource Service left is also moot
because the system provider would provide the backup and training and maintenance for the
system. Look at how IS departments across the country set up a video conferencing system.
I doubt that many rely on in-house IS staff. Look at Law Firm Marketing departments for an
example of bringing in a Project Outsource Service to set up a firm's Internet Website.
Firms are used to handling those kind of projects. It would be rare that the entire IS
department or entire Marketing Department would be outsourced just to meet a project
deadline.
One final comment. Since the 1980s, private law firm
Library Managers are far less frequently encouraged to participate in continuing
educational opportunities. Library Mangers are discouraged from attending Annual Meetings
of their professional organizations. This may be good fiscal management, but, it is not
the way to keep Library Managers on the cutting edge of technology. Private law firm
library managers should be encouraged to take on the responsibility of making a better
sausage, not just required to grind out more sausage. The first two steps to bring this
about are to establish reasonable library staffing ratios and to encourage professional
growth.
Glen Gustafson
Chair of the Private Law Libraries Special Interest Section of the American Association of
Law Libraries
Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy
Los Angeles Library
May 14, 1999 |
