ANSWER: library consulting firms

Some more possible leads:

Alternative Press Index gets 6 hits for the search: privatiz* and librar*

1. Librarianship as a radical profession Author: Klein, Naomi Source: Progressive Librarian no. 23 (Spring, 2004): 46-54 Libraries Worldwide: 178
   
2. Author: Carbone, Michael Source: Progressive Librarian no. 19/20 (Spring, 2002): 124-26 Libraries Worldwide: 178
   (Reviewed Item: Author: Brosio, Richard. Title: A radical democratic critique of capitalist education)
   
3. The WTO and the threat to libraries Author: Hunt, Fiona Source: Progressive Librarian no. 18 (Summer, 2001): 29-39 Libraries Worldwide: 178
   
4. Arizona DOC paralegal fraud: law libraries closed, replaced by scam artists. Author: Pens, Dan Source: Prison Legal News 9, no. 10 (Oct, 1998): 1-4 Libraries Worldwide: 43
   
5. Speech by the superintendent of documents at ALA. Author: Kelley, Wayne Source: Progressive Librarian no. 12/13 (Spring, 1997): 49-52 Libraries Worldwide: 178
   
6. The age of information & the Library of Congress: privatizing LC management.

Double-checking; privatis* gets 102 hits, but none with librar*

http://www.google.com/Top/Society/Issues/Economic/Privatization lists a number of pro and con sites on Privatization, including "The Meaning of Privatization" – a 20 page article by Paul Starr, a Princeton professor who generally opposes privatization, attempting to clarify its meaning as an idea, as theory and rhetoric, and as a political practice." http://www.princeton.edu/~starr/meaning.html This has a 4 page bibliography.

A look through http://www.google.com/Top/Society/Issues/Economic/Public_Private_Partnerships also might be helpful – some are British and Canadian. You can also try www.google.com.au or www.google.co.uk to try to get other perspectives. For the Australia example, I searched privatisation "public libraries," limiting to "Australia Web Sites" and got 692 hits. Limiting www.google.co.uk to "British Web Sites," privatisation "public libraries" progressive commentary gets 89 hits.

Librarians' Internet Index does not seem to get much more. The search privatization and libraries gets 26 hits, but the automatic stemming gets lots of things on "Private Libraries." The search: privatization gets 208 hits, and it might be wise to look at some of them.

Please let me know if some of these leads seem closer than others - we might well be able to use the closest ones to get better ones, by searching for cited references to them. Social Sciences Citation Index (Web of Science) is the VERY expensive official database for cited reference searching. But careful selection of names and words can turn the Web itself into a usable citation search tool. And a few other databases are beginning to include limited citation searching. Academic Search (Ebsco) can find cited references if you search TX ("All Text"), for example.