A Survey on the Outsourcing of Cataloging in Academic Libraries

The authors conducted a survey on outsourcing of cataloging in academic libraries in order to determine the extent of outsourcing being done in academic libraries and the overall success of such projects. The survey instrument included questions about factors that might affect the decision to outsource, what reasons libraries had for outsourcing or not outsourcing, what was being outsourced, and how vendors were chosen. Libraries were also asked to evaluate the success of outsourcing projects. The results show that outsourcing of cataloging is not a strong trend in academic libraries, but that libraries which outsourced were generally pleased with results. There also seems to be a correlation between size of collection and number of new titles cataloged annually and the decision to outsource.