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Received: Mon Feb 16 07:12:26 2009
I don't know if you saw my earlier post on ACQNET-L about the freeware product called JTacq, but in my opinion, it can address the issue of duplicate title detection better than B&T. Instead of going to B&T’s website and picking from their title list, you can have them regularly send you title lists that are put into JTacq. Then let JTacq do the searching locally. The speed that JTacq does this is blindingly fast. Not only will it return results telling you what titles you do not have, but for those titles that you already have it will show you item record information so that you can see the status, number of checkouts, and creation date of each item record. This is great for helping to decide if you need replacement copies or additional copies.
Before you drop B&T you might want to consider opening an account with other vendors such as Amazon, Ingram, Emery Pratt, etc. Then use JTacq to do a broadcast search of the vendors. It will return a result list of each vendor's price offers which you can then sort by the cheapest price. Then you could buy your titles from the cheapest vendor and use the results of those orders to determine which ones give the best balance of service and cost.
We are an academic library and for scholarly materials we usually use YBP who gives us an across the board discount. They have given us great service for many years. We then use B&T and Amazon, that offer variable discounts, as secondary vendors for more popular materials. I have found that Amazon beats B&T prices about half the time. And, yes, Amazon does offer invoicing and book processing options. We also buy a significant number of used books from Amazon and ABEBooks for titles that are out of print or where there is a big cost savings over new book vendor prices.
JTacq has lots more features that can be used to help in technical services, but local searching and vendor price comparison are two biggies that can save you time and big bucks. We couldn't get along without it. I urge you to contact the JTacq developer Mr. Jim Taylor at jtaylor_at_jtdata.com if you are interested.
Don
Don Butterworth
Technical Services Librarian
B.L. Fisher Library
Asbury Theological Seminary
don.butterworth_at_asburyseminary.edu
(859) 858-2227
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Received: Mon Feb 16 10:29:27 2009
All,
We don't have a contract with B&T anymore. NY State is taking its time to secure book contracts for libraries, so B&T took this, I guess, as a cue to add shipping to invoices. We stopped ordering from them immediately. Our problems with TS3 weren't the issue.
We don't have a contract with Barnes and Noble, but have decided to try out their PO program for libraries. The discounts ... at least on media … our first order...are great...about 30% or better. I tried contacting Ingram to no avail. (As we would have liked to work with them also.) We've had invoicing problems with B&T for years and so frankly, my staff is quite happy not to be dealing with them. Forget trying to get in touch with an account rep. Ours never responds. I'd suggest looking at Barnes and Noble online.
Deborah A. Curry
Coordinator, Collection Development and Acquisitions
Penfield Library
Oswego State University
Oswego, NY 13126
(315) 312-3545
dcurry_at_oswego.edu
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Received: Wed Feb 18 17:42:45 2009
We were experiencing some problems last week such as stalling, jumping to a different cart option selection from the one clicked, freezing etc.
However, this week, it seems to be operating well.
At the time, we just assumed it was our Internet Provider as we were experiencing general slowness.
Cheers,
Ella-Fay
ellafayzalezsak_at_gmail.com
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Original message:
On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 9:00 AM,
Hello All,
I'm posting to see if anyone is having the same problems with Baker and Taylor's TS3 that we are. Our collection development team is having a lot of issues in both the morning and afternoon with freezing, error screens, and/or searches that go nowhere (the proverbial “blue screen of death”). In addition, the duplicate checking feature has been running extremely slowly (it can take up to a minute for the information to load). We've had other issues with B&T in the past (mostly dealing with EDIFACT invoices, etc.) and receive many books with processing errors. We're currently thinking of trying Ingram as an alternate vendor, but I'd like to see if they are any better.
Please let me know if you are having any of the same problems, and if so, did you leave Baker and Taylor? Do you prefer another vendor? We'd love to know!
Thanks!
Leila
Leila Jacobs
Acquisitions Clerk
Lawrence Public Library
707 Vermont Street
Lawrence, KS 66044
785-843-0230x127
785-843-0700 fax
ljacobs_at_lawrence.lib.ks.us
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Received on Sun Mar 01 2009 - 12:03:35 EST