Outsourcing of cataloguing is becoming more and more common at academic libraries as a way to save time and money. What does outsourcing mean for the academic library profession? 

While investigating the topic of deprofessionalization of librarianship, and the professional/paraprofessional divide between librarians and library assistants at academic institutions, we noticed a gap in the literature when it came to technical services/cataloguing departments. Specifically, the people at private firms who contribute much of the cataloguing and metadata to universities are not represented in the literature. What role do they play in librarianship and specifically cataloguing/metadata librarianship, as a profession?  How included and engaged in the wider profession are cataloguers at private firms?  Do they participate in the same activities as academic  technical services librarians (e.g. professional development, dissemination of knowledge)?  

Our presentation looks at the results of an exploratory survey targeted at private firm cataloguers to find out what they do in their daily work, as well as how engaged and included they feel in the library profession.