I saw this post on Extranet: Library looks at going private. It's this part that really raises my ire: "No one calls it privatization. It's more accurate to call it 'outsourcing,' said a representative from Library Services Systems Inc., ..."

Let me be the first to dispute the claim that no one calls it privatization when you turn over all public library operations to a private interest. This is exactly what I would call privatization, just like Patricia Schuman did five years ago*, and you know what? In the long run, it's not gonna work, just like it didn't work in Hawaii.

The reason is simple...public management is accountable to public interest and private management is accountable to the bottom line. How convenient that someone from LSSI would argue the purely euphemistic term "outsourcing" is somehow more accurate. I'm not saying that there are not appropriate and beneficial applications of outsourcing, but turning what is essentially a community center over to outsiders (who bring little or no genuine community interest) undermines the whole conception of public libraries, as far as I'm concerned.

*Schuman, Patricia Glass. "The Selling of the Public Library." Library Journal
123(August 1998):50-52.