Feature Articles

Mark Huskisson
Academia asked Mark Huskisson of Lindsay and Croft to tell us a little about himself.
Mark began with L&C last year in Collection Management Services.

Compiled by Sarah Buck, Continuations Bibliographer

My professional life began as a copy editor for a Cambridge International Law list and moved quickly into marketing and sales at Cambridge University Press where I worked and developed for 13 years. I not only worked on traditional print materials but was very fortunate to head-up an eLearning development programme and be involved in Cambridge's eBook programme from the very beginning. I did have a number of opportunities to move whilst at Cambridge but it is a wonderful organization that adheres to developing the finest scholarly writing and pedagogy, thus any move would need to be special and would always have been very difficult.

During the 2005 Midwinter ALA in Boston I was convinced that YBP had commensurate desires to work alongside their partners and develop the collections to be the best and not just a commercial desire to drive sales and, like Cambridge, YBP have a remarkable tradition and reputation for developing innovation in the academic community. This combination of respecting and developing academic traditions whilst sensitively driving innovation was too much of an exciting prospect to pass up. And here I am, thirteen years of publishing pedigree and learning everyday how different and rewarding collection development can be at the sharp end of things.

My Responsibilities at L&C

My title is Manager, Collection Management Services. My responsibilities cover a wide range of ever-changing activities. My core task is to ensure that book profiling in the UK retains the quality that is inherent within the wider organization ensuring that the treatment of materials is consistent across all subjects wherever they are profiled globally. I am also ultimately responsible in ensuring that our coverage of books is as broad and deep as it can possibly be for our entire library constituency. In addition I am responsible for the L&C's requirements to develop technical infrastructures and that of our interface with our international library community. And finally I maintain the heritage of excellent relationships with our publishers in the UK and Europe.

Why I left an academic press to join the corporate world

Trust me when I say that I have asked myself that question many times over the last year! I consistently found myself out of my depth in a new environment and wished for the comfortable familiarity of my former surroundings at Cambridge. But that in itself explains why I moved. Cambridge is steeped in tradition and, as wonderful as that can be, it can sometimes be a little too comfortable. Innovation is often difficult because, as a publisher, you are distanced from the very environment that you are trying to innovate for.

YBP offered the chance to stretch myself at the sharp end, where budgets and margins are at their thinnest. To work with the leading academic institutions developing an infrastructure for future generations to access the best collections in the world whilst being sensitive to the palimpsestuous legacy of many forebears is something that enthuses me. Even just writing this reminds me why I made the move. I would not have done it if I thought I was in the company of people who disregard these traditions and do not wish to innovate. At YBP I had the chance to work with and learn from the best.

As an addendum to this I must pay tribute to Miriam Lindsay in the UK who has always considered customers needs of paramount importance - sometimes ahead of what would be considered commercial common sense. It is a lesson that has taken me a while to learn; that sometimes a single part of the operation makes little financial sense but the sum of the parts makes L&C/YBP by far and away the best book vendor in the world.

Approval Plans in the UK and Europe

The UK and Europe are predominantly firm order markets with minimal adoption of approval plans across the continent. The environment has moved in a similar direction to North America but the unique time pressures which drove the US to approval plans a few decades ago have not been replicated in the EU.

The pace of change has been slower in the UK but we find ourselves in a similar position as the US a couple of decades ago. The difference is that the context in which the change needed to happen. The socio-economic pressures facing libraries were not confined to just their academic institutions, they were playing out across American society as a whole providing impetus and expediting the necessary changes. The UK has seen similar changes yet at a near glacial pace. The imperative to change has crept up on British libraries. Collection Management services supplied by YBP (amongst others) provide a number of solutions to enable greater efficacy in British libraries. Approval plans do not provide a panacea for the fiscal constraints in Europe but they would certainly go a long way to providing best value for the parent institutions.

The major barrier to the uptake is a well founded misinterpretation of what an approval plan is. The widely held belief is that the libraries out-source control of selection and collection management and that the librarian is relegated to the role of a book minder. There are a number of reasons for this but I think that it can only be a matter of time before approval plans are given a chance in Europe and each success will propagate new plans as trust is gained in the new methodology.

Note that contrary to what I have written above, a system of 'approvals' is run by public library vendors in the UK. But this bears little resemblance to the highly efficient and detailed approval plans developed by YBP and other vendors. The existence of these unpopular and wasteful plans does little to change the perception of the approval system prevalent outside of Europe.

The greatest difference and the greatest similarity between the U.S. and U.K. book business

There are a number of differences in the way that books are collected; id est that the very reason for a library collection differs philosophically. The fiscal and socio-political pressures on British libraries continue to change collections policies. They are attempting to adapt to the ever growing constituency and increasing access issues with ever diminishing resources. This has enforced a selection pragmatism that is yet to settle to a consistent collections paradigm.

But there are far more similarities than differences. Whilst separated by a common language, the UK and US are bound by a desire to disseminate pedagogy and to collect this for future generations. This is a great stabilizing influence in a destabilized world.

The major key influence of the UK and US is that of globalization. Contrary to the knee-jerk reaction that this term generally raises, I feel that this trend is a necessary development for book rights and pricing. The territorial rights imposed in colonial fashion by the large commercial publishing houses are - like Colonialism - an outdated and redundant paradigm.

The internet has sounded the death knell for restricting the dissemination of book content globally but the big Houses continue to fight to retain the status quo as it enables a greater profit to be squeezed out of the book buying community. Today's consumer is all too savvy to allow this to happen. Whilst I welcome globalization's effect on making books more available at a standard price worldwide, I would always hope that this trend doesn't destroy the idiosyncrasies of publishing houses of different cultures and backgrounds.