ACQNET v1n024 (February 6, 1991) URL = http://www.infomotions.com/serials/acqnet/acq-v1n024 ACQNET, Vol 1, No. 24, February 6, 1991 ======================================= (1) FROM: Joe Barker SUBJECT: Vendor selection (33 lines) (2) FROM: Scott Wicks SUBJECT: Vendor selection (51 lines) (3) FROM: Chuck Hamaker SUBJECT: ALCTS CD/Acq. split (17 lines) (4) FROM: October Ivins SUBJECT: Combining serials check-in with public services (20 lines) (1) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 5 Feb 91 13:50:43 PST From: Joe Barker Subject: Reply to Barbara Winters' question on Using Vendors & Ordering Direct I don't know where at ALA Barbara heard me say Berkeley uses vendors for 50% of its firm orders. But it turns out to be about correct, depending on whom you want to call a "vendor." Berkeley placed 47.3% of its total firm orders with North American vendors (e.g., BookHouse, Midwest, Coutts, Yankee, BNA, and more) in the last fiscal year. If you include international "vendors", many of whom resemble a small bookstore or gathering service but some of whom in W. Europe are huge, that's another 20.2% ordered through vendors. The total is 67.5% from all vendors and vendor-lookalikes worldwide. I'm not willing to do the work of isolating only the U.S. ordering. My guess is that it's still about 50% through vendors. As far as policies go, my staff operate under the following guidelines for the department. Do what's best for each order, and order through vendors whenever you won't jeopardize the success of the order. We order quite a bit of esoteric materials, however, and that causes a lot of direct ordering. Experience is their best guideline. I make sure that all orders returned from vendors get re-ordered and answered by the person who initiated the order to keep that experience current. I am very fortunate to have an Order Division (7 individuals, some part-time) with accumulated experience ordering in excess of 50 years and broad language/country expertise--all of whom are flexible and willing to keep up to date with changes. No rigid policies work. Hope this is of some value, Barbara. (2) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 06 Feb 91 15:41:00 EST From: Scott Wicks Subject: Policy/guidelines for assigning vendors (B. Winters, 1:20) Cornell Univ. Library follows a policy which is geared to using a vendor when at all possible. We are very rigid in this approach so far as is practical and cost effective. The bulk of our US firm order business (and I don't have percentages, sorry! But it is at least 95%) is divided among two vendors. These vendors were the successful bidders in an exercise Cornell undertook willingly which involved our sending out RFPs to at least 10 book vendors. We asked that they bid based on the assumption they would get at least $100,000/annum of business. (For those interested in additional information on this process, contact Christian, CBY@CORNELLC.) We go so far as to supply our firm order vendors with the address of the distributor of an item for those which are not mainstream publishers. We find this practice preferable to ordering from several small, uniquely special, each-with-its-own-way-of-doing-things, suppliers who may require prepayment, may not accept returns, may be one of the "shady" dealers we didn't know about, etcetera. We will order direct when we are forced to because the publisher will not sell through agents, when it is more cost effective because the publisher does not discount the list price (for those titles in excess of $100), when an item is needed yesterday, when an item is of such a nature (STRANGE non-book format) that it would behoove us to order direct. I include loose-leaf services among the strange. My point is that we will try our damnedest to avoid direct ordering. Antiquarian materials are ordered directly from the dealer making the offer and are usually reserved by telephone before we send out a confirming order. Some of our US purchases are acquired through a publisher-based approval plan. We have a core list of 112 trade publishers which are published or distributed in the US, Canada, or the UK, plus all US university presses and Cambridge/- Oxford. Our general philosophy governing non-US titles is to use one vendor per country, in country of origin. We break that rule with France, UK, and the Netherlands either to reflect our fear of having all of our eggs in one basket or to keep our vendors competing for our business. Many of these dealers supply title notification slips. If a BH Blackwell's slip alerts us to a title we wish to order, BH Blackwell's will receive that order (unless that title is published/distributed in the US, in which case we will use one of our two firm order dealers.) Cornell is very bullish about using vendors, but we do realize that the main objective is to acquire the title. (3) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 06 Feb 91 09:49:58 CST From: Chuck Hamaker Subject: RE the ALCTS CD/Acq. split. Nothing heavy or profound, but how about Materials Acquisitions (MA) instead of ALMS. No reason to start with an acronym that puts Acq. in a semantically inferior position. How about MAS (Spanish for More)? Either Mother or More have postitive connotations ALMS lacks. Why would we want anyone outside the library community to perceive of this group as beggars! I'm afraid that with ALMS as an acronym Acquisitions people will vote NO-ALMS with their feet and look for other homes. Or maybe it should be BAMS (Books and More Section) or POBLM (like pablum? Purchasers of Books for Libraries and More). Or AOLMS (Acquisitions of Library Materials Section) pronounced like a buddhist mantra. Or maybe LAMS (Library Acquisition of Materials Section) or ALS (too sexist? Acquisitions Librarians Section) or MALS (Material Acquisitions Librarians Section. Get my drift? Don't get stuck with the supplicants label. We have enough stereotypes out there without this one. (4) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 06 Feb 91 10:22:05 CST From: October Ivins Subject: Serials checking-in and public services Rosann Bazirjian asked about serials reorganization in the context of automa- tion. _Serials Librarian_ vol. 19, no.s 1/2, which arrived here Jan 15th, is devoted to the topic of how serials departments are organized. I haven't read it but it looks very interesting. Here at LSU, we reorganized to combine serials check in and public service in August 1985. This was a necessity for us, since we have no publicly available record of serials holdings. One of the primary functions of our Serials Desk is telling people what we own. We have NOTIS and are using all modules, but our serials work in NOTIS is concentrating on reviewing and editing bib records and adding retrospective holdings. We are some ways away from online check-in for current periodicals, but other categories of material have "virtual" or true on-line check in. We address the staffing concerns of running the Desk by having all departmental staff take regular desk shifts, and using student assistants and library school grad assistants. ***** END OF FILE ***** END OF FILE ***** END OF FILE ***** END OF FILE *****