Uncooked Data is possibly the only interested person in London not to be attending SLA Europe’s next seminar on 30 March – a blockbuster event looking at the future of information services. The outsourcing and offshoring library functions is clearly a hot topic as we wait to see how the models adopted by some of the major law firms turn out. Is it too early to count these as a success? I’m thinking that if staff move from in-house to outsourced under TUPE rules, there’s no change in pay/ contracts for two years (but I might be wrong on that). What happens after those two years? Will we see salaries shrink and people leave? If one organisation has a large community of info pros, who have their training and networking needs met in-house (or not at all) will that have a detrimental or a positive effect on the rest of the community?
The reason I can’t attend is because I’ll be at the 4th annual Spring Event – the Future of Reading, organised by U.S. Embassy to Italy and the American University of Rome. So it’s a nice reason – I’m excited about contributing to the day, and only mildly concerned about being simultaneously translated. I’m still prepping my presentation on the use of ebooks in London law libraries; when my slide deck is done I’ll post it to Slideshare.
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