Mellan Hantverk och Outsourcing : Utmaningar vid inköp av litteratur på andra språk än svenska och engelska vid svenska folkbibliotek

Between craftsmanship and outsourcing - challenges in purchasing literature in languages other than Swedish and English at Swedish public libraries. This paper examines how ten librarians working in Swedish public libraries perceive challenges connected to the acquisition of books in languages other than Swedish and English. It makes an attempt to explain how these challenges affect the librarians’ acquisition process and push it towards either a craftsmanship based process or a process based on a high degree of outsourcing responsibility. The method used was qualitative interviews with librarians that had acquisition of books in languages other than Swedish or English as part of their work responsibilities. A total of eight interviews, two of them group interviews with two participants, were conducted. Five of the interviewed librarians worked in a large city, while five worked in three smaller municipalities. The analysis was inspired by Evans’ & Saponaro’s model of the collection development process and Brian Quinn’s use of George Ritzer’s theory of McDonaldization to examine the state of academic libraries in the U.S.A. Three main challenges are discussed; identifying user needs, absence of language or literature knowledge and poor availability of books. The interviewed librarians acquisition processes could be said to exist on a scale between a high degree of craftsmanship and a high degree of outsourcing. One factor pushing librarians towards an outsourcing of responsibility was absence of language knowledge, which lead to a higher degree of dependency on vendor assessment of literature. Mandatory purchasing agreements and lack of adequate technical and cataloging services inhouse were also factors affecting the acquisition process as they lead to less choice in vendor selection and as a consequence hindered the librarians’ ability to take on responsibility in selecting and acquiring books