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Close Encounters of the Collection Development Kind
By Joshua Winant, CMS Manager, YBP Library Services
- presented at the panel discussion, “Can Library Values be Outsourced?” 29th Annual Charleston Conference, Nov. 4 – 7, 2009.
The immediacy of my ‘yes’ to participate in this panel discussion was equaled only by an even more instinctive, almost defensive, ‘yes’ to the question being posed - a reaction no doubt shared by the other vendors invited. Any hesitancy was not in second guessing whether they could be, or guesstimating how well they can be, but how best to argue the point when a new argument is available in any email of any hour of any day. It became exciting, if not a little artsy, and certainly no less cinematic to consider meeting with my Lead Profiler two hours before I got on the plane and use the last things we discussed to open my presentation. That’s what I did and why I will answer today’s question with two questions of my own: Are zombies corpses? And, what does the seminal moment of Richard Dreyfuss molding clay in Close Encounters of the Third Kind have to do with collection development in academic libraries?
I recall clearly the first time I answered the question of whether or not library values could be outsourced. I had been with a book jobber before but the customer base was less academic. In that regard, I was a rookie Continuations Supervisor for my new company and felt pressured to get us out from under the backlog of several large transfer lists. It seemed every university had its own geology department and each published its own bulletin. Cutting corners seemed admirable to suggest, especially if we could couch it in a new service parameter – doesn’t make business sense, or something to that effect. I didn’t know. All I knew is we were spending plenty of time pre-paying for titles that cost more to process than the publications did. Besides, the naming of any new restriction code would be for the Head Bibliographer to whom I would suggest the idea. How wrong I was. Didn’t I know libraries have their own Acquisitions staffs and could just as easily place standing orders with the major reference publishers? Didn’t I know it can cost some libraries 60 bucks to generate a single Proforma check? Didn’t I know for every reference librarian checking-in a $500 annual set, there’s a physical science selector eager to claim their irregular publication? Didn’t I know these titles underscored the Library Service in the company’s name?
Years later I can say that a vendor/library relationship is really no different than any other relationship. At the heart of how a vendor reflects the values entrusted them is trust itself. Trust prompting innovation. Trust mitigating risk. Trust answering the outsourcing question for today. Trust asking the same outsourcing question tomorrow. My own experience on how a library builds trust in its vendor is based on YBP’s approval and continuations services, which are core services of all academic book sellers. It begins with the approval plan and the vendor’s ability to embody the customer’s collection development policy, which states the values held by that institution. YBP uses an extensive set of subject and non-subject parameters in conjunction with existing library classification schedules. These parameters expand over time based on the collection needs of our customers, and the current version of our glossary is in essence a reflection of the collective values held across the customer base. New customers gain access to services already in place for like-minded institutions and existing customers benefit from the services added for new customers. Interestingly enough, though the commercial perception of a vendor might be one of sell, sell, sell, the opposite is often at play. There are as many rules written to exclude books in the crafting of an approval plan as there are written to include. I cite the skit given by our Lead Profiler for visiting customers. Standing at a make-believe auction block, he holds up a book and says it’s about this-and-that, and half the hands go up. Saying the book is by so-and-so press, half the hands go down. Stating the book belongs to series X, and series X is a numbered series, a few more hands go down. The vendor learns that boasting about the number of records in its series file has as much appeal to a library (for the greater number of books it can block from their approval plan) as the appeal it has for placing more standing orders on a continuations account.
Once the approval plan is in place, trust in a vendor becomes tangible (or not) in the book profiling process, which at YBP is done book-in-hand. Any marketing by the publisher is put to the test as the profiler leafs through pages picking and choosing parameters and descriptors which are clear and compelling to the actual content of the book. Profilers at YBP are broken into groups with assigned LC ranges and become subject specialists over time for the knowledge acquired not only of the subject matter, but the quality of publishers and their authors, as well as the values they see customers hold for that content. The question of whether library values can be outsourced might best be answered in the latest development within YBP’s approval services. Subject and non-subject parameters had always been non-qualitative and applied objectively. Trusting in the role of the YBP profiler as subject specialist, customers began to ask if a value could be added to the bibliographic record which would consider the book as essential or recommended for their collection. The Select level became the first purely subjective field integrated into the profiling process, and again, its coming into being might be the simplest way to answer today’s question.
Once an approval plan is outputting books and notifications slips to the customer, the trust between a library and its vendor is strengthened in the constant revision of the plan to better reflect the collection development policy of the institution. Library values cannot be outsourced if those values are not communicated to the vendor. The revising of an approval plan is important not only in defining the existing values a customer may hold over its collection, but also to account for changes within those values over time. Most recently, as book processing services make once returnable books non-returnable, and as approval plans need to be scaled back to adjust for reduced budgets, library values have shifted to examine a vendor’s ability to fine tune their plan’s output.
Requests for new services are often viewed by the vendor at both the individual customer level and across its entire customer base. This is done for quality assurances as much as commercial concerns. A singular request to add a societal publisher that requires pre-payment to the approval press list is seen in light of the new service it would be for all customers. If the vendor decides it can offer such publications on approval but with no discount, it has to evaluate if this policy will be agreeable to all. Likewise, as requests for new descriptors come up, some are more easily considered than others. Certain buzz words buzz their way into being relatively quickly. Nanotechnology seemed to light up on everyone’s radar at the same time and its narrow definition allowed for consistent usage by the profilers in a short period of time. However, the History of Science took months of communications with Sales to forge a common definition across the customer base so inconsistencies in usage by the profilers wouldn’t lead to poor service for the customers. Examples like this greatly magnify when you consider a project like implementing eBooks into the approval services. Meetings between Sales to identify customer needs and between operational units to address internal workflows stretched out over 18 months and involved several rounds of customer focus groups.
Vendors must also trust simply in the serendipitous ways in which business conducts itself. Sometimes, after other attempts are tabled or fail outright, a customer request might be carried out with no perceived value to larger customer base at the time of implementation. And sometimes it remains as such. For the titles with active standing order customers within YBP’s series file, 5% are maintained for a single customer. Remember that earlier story about the geological bulletins? However, that was not the case for a school that wanted YBP to supply books with a certain ‘Southern aura’ about them. To profilers in New England, this request conjured up images of kudzu and little else that shipped many books. The customer finally got down to identifying books by this author and that author. YBP already had a Major Authors list, and so a subgroup was split out for this one school and lesser authors were added. Over time, whenever Sales realized a customer was after particular regional authors, they split off similar lists. This led to a more formalized offering of Author Lists for individual schools, which in time led to supplying faculty authors for interested customers, which then expanded to customers requesting the faculty authors of other customers.
Another mainstay of YBP’s approval service with humbler beginnings is the use of specific questions. When all the LC cutters, subject and non-subject parameters in the world can’t cut out a specific topic, or when the options available can’t open up a customer profile large enough to include certain material, then customers have the ability to embed a free text question for the profilers. Answering these questions every day, the profilers become ingrained with the values of their customers, and in time begin predicting the desired actions of their counterparts in the library, the selectors. This was the case with the two questions asked of you at the outset of this discussion.
Are zombies corpses? This is not a question currently asked by a customer, but we do have a customer that originally asked if books had any erotica in them. If they did, don’t send them. They qualified this question to include nudity after being shipped a certain photography book. They then qualified it to include corpses after being sent a certain film studies book. Our Lead Profiler feels it is only a matter of time before they are sent another film studies book with zombies and he’s asking the question for them ahead of time – are zombies corpses? To him, for this customer, the answer is yes. If they don’t want to see corpses when they’re stretched out on the ground, then they won’t want to see them up and walking around.
What does the seminal moment of Richard Dreyfuss molding clay in Close Encounters of the Third Kind have to do with collection development in academic libraries? We have a customer that collects any and everything about their home state to the point of wanting a copy even if the name alone appears anywhere in the book. When they caught us for not shipping a book on Wild Bill because it was about his shows abroad, we realized their notion of a home state knew no borders. But did that mean it could also go beyond words on the page? What if the only reference was a movie still depicting a clay model of a natural monument in their state - did that count? Our profiler thought so. He answered yes, sent the book, and the response from the library was, “You got it.”
Vendors can get it, but they need help in figuring out what to get. These specific questions asked of YBP profilers are metaphorical of the larger question being asked of today’s panel. Whether library values can be outsourced has to be answered every day with every book. And the daily answering comes with a price, as witnessed by the spouses of profilers at vendors that get it. It’s the Holidays. They’ll walk through bookstores after being told to look for a book for an Uncle Earl or an Aunt Bessie, only to stop zombie-like in their tracks, half-smiling. There it is. They hold it up and shout across the store, “Look honey, finally, a book on vernacular architecture. We have a customer that would love this!”
The author would like to thank Rob Norton, Lead Profiler at YBP Library Services, for the suggestions and material he provided.
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