Re: the questions asking why a vendor charges for this, that or the
other. I'm curious...why not ask the vendor?
>> While I'd love for this
>> one to be a free service, I also figure I'd then be paying for it in some
>> other indirect, fashion since vendors are going to cover their costs
>> somewhere.
With respect, where should a vendor or content-provider go to cover
the cost of doing business? A donor? The state legislature?
Investors, are an option, I suppose, but I don't think giving away
products and services = return on investment.
As posted earlier, services provided by vendors are not 'free' to
create, maintain, and enhance.
Nor is it 'free' for staff--vendor staff--to meet with and explain
services/features/products to customers.
It's not 'free' for either party to implement online collection
development, acquisitions or cataloging services.
I worked for an ILS vendor over a decade ago when embedded order data
was being tested--records embedded with order/price data enabling
auto-creation of POs and invoice lines. 5 years later I went to YBP.
Before, after and in between, I've worked in a few academic libraries,
large and small, in Acq, CD and/or Serials. I started out typing 70-80
print book purchase orders per week using those 7-part order forms and
manually creating brief on-order records for the OPAC. 20+ years
later, I marveled when a customer told me 400 hundred book orders were
cleared off in an afternoon.
Maybe it doesn't take much to wow me.
I and my YBP colleagues spent hours working with librarians and staff
interested in these services, with no guarantee the library would
implement. That was my job. Just as it was my job as a CD/Acq/Serials
head to evaluate services offered by vendors. I sent out the RFPs, I
considered the options and made the best decision based on factors
important to the work, staff and library. If cost was the most
important factor, or the only factor, the choice was easy.
In my experience, cost was rarely the only factor, though. Perhaps I'm
an anomaly--when subscription agents offered me 0% service charge, I
usually declined. I figured 0%=0 service (not that they would make up
the price elsewhere). :-)
One last thing, for years we librarians have tried to educate our
users that what appears on their screen isn't 'free'--eResources cost
a lot of money. Yet, we often expect what we see on our staff screens,
applications designed to create efficiencies, be available for free.
Reeta
Reeta Sinha, MPH, MSLS
Resource Management Librarian
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Received on Mon Apr 22 2013 - 16:28:19 EDT