ACQNET v1n029 (February 20, 1991) URL = http://www.infomotions.com/serials/acqnet/acq-v1n029 ACQNET, Vol 1, No. 29, February 20, 1991 ======================================== (1) FROM: Margie Axtmann SUBJECT: Ordering from vendor slips (18 lines) (2) FROM: Richard Jasper SUBJECT: Ordering from vendor slips (22 lines) (3) FROM: Ann Okerson SUBJECT: Ordering from vendor slips (8 lines) (4) FROM: Mark Haslett SUBJECT: Ordering from vendor slips (16 lines) (5) FROM: Marcie Kingsley SUBJECT: Ordering from vendor slips (16 lines) (6) FROM: Marcie Kingsley SUBJECT: ACQNET as an edited medium (18 lines) (1) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 20 Feb 91 09:46:30 EST From: Margie Axtmann Subject: Vendor slips I think you're missing a key component in the set of options regarding vendor slips, i.e. making the selectors choose which slips are really valuable and useful in their collection development work. I agree that you should send orders to vendors when you select from their slips. I also agree that you should pay for a slip service if the vendor is not going to get your orders. (Otherwise the rest of us paying customers are subsidizing your service.) But it's crazy to get lots of duplicative batches of slips from a variety of vendors. You should have comprehensive coverage, either with a small number of carefully chosen slip plans or with several carefully profiled slip plans. I know that not all slips are alike, and some are more informative than others. You have to factor that into the equation and come up with the right balance. From the selector's viewpoint, fewer slips should be better as long as they cover the right territory. I'm sure you can find a way to sell that idea to them. (2) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 20 Feb 91 11:00:34 EST From: Richard Jasper Subject: Vendor slips A quick trip out on a limb... If everyone is doing it (i.e., competing vendors sending bibliographic slips for the same titles), has it changed from being a vendor service to being a marketing ploy? As a selector (in a former life), I always appreciated publishers' blurbs, too, but I never saw them as a reason for the acquisitions folks to send the order directly to the publisher. Ditto vendor slips/catalogs: They are very handy, but I really think their purpose is not so much to let us know these titles exist but that this particu- lar vendor (but so can a lot of other vendors) can supply them. So maybe you shouldn't feel *too* guilty about leaving well enough alone, Christian. Having said all this, I must confess that the opinion expressed above doesn't necessarily conform to local practice around here. We still tend to give the business to the person who sends the slip, but it's not a hard and fast rule. (3) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 20 Feb 91 11:03:29 EST From: Ann Okerson Subject: Ordering from vendor slips Your best option is leave well enough alone -- that's the best of the four. But there's another one, which is to send copies of this message and any replies you get, either via e-mail or fax or letter to those vendors. Let them be aware, without your doing a great deal of individual contact. (4) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 20 Feb 91 15:36 EST From: Mark Haslett Subject: Ordering from vendor slips Option 4 - Leave well enough alone - is(!) the best option, for all concerned. Your sense of obligation seems to be to vendors, but why initiate a process (i.e. suggest either they stop sending slips or they start charging you for them) which the vendors could do themselves if they saw the need. In sending you slips, vendors are (a) soliciting your business and (b) marketing them- selves (i.e. keeping their name in front of you.) Even if (a) is not working, the vendor may see (b) as being a worthwhile long term strategy, and if not they have the option to stop sending you the slips or charging for them. So when you ask "what do I do?", I suggest you do not preempt the vendor, especially if the slips are providing a worthwhile service to your institution and its selectors. To "actively do" otherwise may open you up to a charge of having a misplaced sense of obligation. (5) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 20 Feb 91 16:00:56 EST From: Marcie Kingsley Subject: Your notification/title slips from many vendors You do seem to receive an amazing array of slips; my vote would be for judi- ciously cutting down on the number of vendors who send slips. Perhaps doing some careful profiling with the remaining vendors to make sure you continue to receive fairly comprehensive coverage would help answer any objections bibliog- raphers/selectors may have. Much as we all hate to part with money unnecessarily, I think your suggestion of paying for slips from vendors from whom we don't order very much is worth pondering. And there is precedent; Rothman, a vendor for legal publications, charges $ 500 for its "green slip" service (title notification slips). When I worked in a law library I felt free to send their slips to other vendors when there was reason to think a different vendor could handle the order better/ cheaper/faster. (6) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 20 Feb 91 16:19:48 EST From: Marcie Kingsley Subject: ACQNET as an edited medium I hope you will not hesitate to include this on ACQNET. First, many thanks for all the time that you must put in on this project. I can usually just manage to keep up with reading. I also appreciate all the time that others spend replying. Second, the decision to manage ACQNET as an edited newletter or edited bulletin board was a superb one. There are some free-for-all LISTSERVS or other entities out there which, while sharing very valuable information, are a bit of a mess--at least in the initial stages where users are still learning what gets sent out to the whole group, which, of course, is everything. I hope you can manage to keep on editing until 1992 or whenever you said you would aim for! ***** END OF FILE ***** END OF FILE ***** END OF FILE ***** END OF FILE *****