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Why GCPL Started Buying Locally
- 2. Why Do it?
- 3. What can be bought locally?
- 4. Why did GCPL start buying locally?
- 5. What stores?
- 6. Some stores won’t work out: Why?
- 7. Shopping
- 8. Sending orders to vendors
- 10. Edifact Ordering
- 12. Baby Steps
- 13. Initial Meeting
- 14. POs Versus Credit Card
- 15. Where do local stores get stuff?
- 17. Shipping
- 19. Bumps in the road
- 21. Multiple POs
- 23. Be Specific on Invoices
- 24. Correct Editions
- 25. Packing Boxes
- 26. Cancellations
- 27. Errors
- 29. Overwhelmed!
- 30. Go Forth and Purchase Locally!
- 31. Contact me: Tamar Kreke Coordinator of Adult and Technical Services Greene County Public Library tkreke@gcpl.lib.oh.us (937) 736-7079
Editor's Notes
- Introduce myself. In 2013, my department spent around $300K in our county on materials for our collections. Here’s why and how.
- Support local economy. Builds good relationships with stores; you are not the competition if you are buying from them! Puts local money entrusted to the library back into the local economy. Voters love it!
- Anything but I will focus on materials for the library’s collections (books & AV). We purchase: regular print fiction and nonfiction, large print, music CDs, DVDs, console games.
- Mandate from the director to spend $100,000 locally on materials. Concerns: how? No relationship with local vendors. Initial forays indicated that some local stores weren’t interested enough in our business to make it work. Would the extra work be too much for selectors and for technical services staff? Who would haul materials from the stores?
- Any local book, music, or video store. Locally-owned businesses are ideal, but you may need to expand to include national chains. We purchase at local big chains, like Books & Co (Booksamillion), Barnes & Noble, Best Buy. But also at independently-owned local stores like Diana’s Books & Things, Faith Christian Bookstore, Blue Jacket Books, Super Fly Comics, Classic Country Connection (a local radio station and CD store).
- Stores aren’t set up to handle orders of the size and frequency of public libraries. Some of them are not able to adapt. Give examples.
- So do I just go to the local bookstore and start loading a cart? That didn’t work for me. Stores didn’t have enough stock on shelves (multiple copies nor variety of titles) and what was on the shelf was not always in good condition (fingerprints, dust, bent covers, etc). I didn’t have easy access to the catalog (this was before smart phones and tablets were as common) while I was in the store.
- It made more sense to me to compile lists to order; in the end I used TS3 to create the cart. That way, I could also still indicate branch distribution to the acquisitions clerk and she could EDI ordering to import order records. I copy and paste the lists from TS3 into an email to send to the local store. I “cc” the acquistions clerk on the email so she knows there are new orders in the TS3 account to import into our catalog, so that the order records show up for the public to see, and also to make invoicing easier (less to handkey later).
- Ask vendors to respond to your email orders with confirmation that they received it. Sometimes emails get filtered into Spam/Junk Mail folders, even if you have sent the vendor many emails successfully in the past. Ask for them to let you know of any titles they can’t get for you, preferably referring the PO# and ISBN.
- We are able to use Edifact to import order records (because I create carts in TS3), but our acquisitions clerk does have to hand key the prices and discounts.
- Purchasing locally means our processors in technical services have to do much more processing. Books that, if we ordered from B&T, would come in Mylar jackets, have to have them added; music CDs and DVDs that, had we ordered them from Midwest, would have come in sturdier cases instead of jewel cases, have to be re-cased.
- Contact one local store. Talk to them about ordering locally. Get your account set up with them. Things you may need to provide your fiscal office: The vendor’s contact info, including email address, physical address, billing address, website, who to contact about paying bills (may not be the owner), and a W-9, as well as direct deposit info (for paying invoices). Things you may need to provide the local vendor: Tax exempt information Billing/shipping address Credit card info, possibly Create a small order (approx 20-30 titles) and submit to vendor.
- Arrange a face-to-face meeting with the local store. I’m not a fan of tons of meetings, generally, but this really has proven to be helpful. Take all staff that the store will be dealing with the most, including all selectors that will be sending them orders and any staff that will be their main point of contact at technical services when they are dealing with delivery and invoicing. For us, that is the acquisitions clerk. At the meeting, go over your requirements for local purchasing (I’ll talk more about this in a minute) and find out what requirements the store has. They doubtless won’t have any initially because they probably have never done ordering with an organization like the library. Strangely, the orders they fill for schools don’t seem to prepare them for dealing with the library. Be prepared for them to have questions after you have sent them an order or two.
- When we started ordering so much locally, some problems cropped up. Depending on how busy we are, it can take us 45-90 days to pay invoices. This means that local vendors were running up big amounts on their end with their wholesalers (sometimes up to $20K). They would start hitting credit limits and would in turn contact us needing to be paid. In fact, some of the smaller stores had very low credit limits with their vendors, and so were unable to accept POs from us; for those, we use a credit card. This, in turn, has caused us to hit our limit on our credit account when that invoice is also sitting in a stack to be paid. It means that our fiscal office has prioritized local purchasing; they try to pay these invoices first. That means that sometimes the B&T invoices are later than B&T would like, which means the fiscal office gets cranky calls from B&T. However, most of the time, we are able to balance all of this.
- From the same places we would; B&T, Ingram, Amazon, etc. Most of them use B&T. When I am creating my carts in TS3, if I see that it isn’t in stock there, I don’t bother to purchase it from a local vendor; they probably can’t get it for us. I order those titles from Amazon.
- Most of the local stores are able to offer us a 15% discount. The larger chains give us 20% or even 25%. This will not be as large a discount as typical library vendors, mostly because the local store is using the same vendor you would have, and is probably getting the same level of discounting from them as your library does. Some stores are not able to give us a discount at all.
- Packing boxes- boxes not filled with materials or paper, shifting occurs, materials get damaged. Shipping vs hand delivering: some vendors do not want to hand deliver, others don’t want to ship. Some don’t want to deliver as often as you want. We require they deliver what they have at least every other week. Some stores may charge you a mileage cost for delivery to your location (sort of like a shipping charge).
- Since we’ve started doing local purchasing two stores closed. But, not to fear, there is a happy ending. One store went from a storefront to an online store and we were able to continue doing business with them. The other store was purchased by a new owner and we are now doing business with the new owner.
- Publication date far in future: at the volume that I’m ordering locally, I order things that aren’t yet published, sometimes as far out as six months. Local stores have been willing to handle this, although it throws them at first. One store was not able to deal with this, so from them I only order books that have already been published. Other stores will not have access to the internet and/or email at work. One store clerk had to check his email at home, find my orders, print them out, and bring them into the bookstore. Another store filters all emails through their Media Director, of all people, so I have to send my orders to her and she prints them out and gives them to the actual staff person who will doing all the work. Some stores have a limited range of material they can order; for instance, one Christian bookstore could only order Christian-related materials. I think their wholesaler dealt only with Christian-based publishers.
- Over time, we developed a list of local purchase requirements that we give to all new local vendors. This list comes from problems we ran into as we started working with local vendors. I thought I’d talk about some of our requirements.
- All orders need to be kept separate from other orders & MUST be invoiced separately. Each PO number should be on its own individual invoice; invoices must not contain items from multiple PO numbers. PO numbers need to be on packing slips/invoices.
- Partial shipments using the same PO# are okay as long as all the items in the shipment are all from the same PO#. We ask stores not to deliver partial shipments of individual titles but to hold titles until all copies ordered have arrived & deliver all copies at one time on one invoice. (i.e. if we order 5 copies, please hold until all 5 copies have arrived and deliver all 5 copies at once. Do not deliver 3 copies and then 2 copies at a later date)
- All titles on packing slips/invoices need to be specific titles – no “misc. title” or “generic book” listings. Having ISBNs on invoices is highly encouraged and helpful, but not mandatory. Please include ISBNs if possible. We really, really encourage the inclusion of ISBNs on the invoices. It is helpful if packing slips/invoices can show list prices as well as discounted prices. This is not mandatory, but helpful if at all possible.
- Correct editions need to be observed. Example: if we order a “3rd edition”, a “2nd edition” is not acceptable. A newer edition may be acceptable but a phone call or email before substituting a different edition is expected.
- The packing of the boxes is important. Shifting books result in damaged books which are unacceptable and will result in more work for everyone. We ask stores to fill empty space in boxes with packing paper or something similar. It is helpful if boxes are not over 40 lbs. It makes moving them around much easier. Deliveries need to occur a minimum of every 2 weeks or as often as necessary.
- If a title is unavailable, the cancellation of said title needs to be communicated clearly. Once cancelled, we do not usually accept it if it becomes available at a later date, although we have had stores very nicely let us know that they can now get the title, and occasionally we have not gotten the title another way, and are glad they notified us.
- Processing of invoices for payment may be delayed if we are awaiting the resolution of an error. Errors may include, but are not limited to, damaged books, incorrect number of books, incorrect titles, overcharges, etc.
- Every 3-6 months, we put together a backorder summary to review with the vendor. Meet in person at the store so the vendor can do quick checks. Cancel titles that have not been filled months after publication and possibly order elsewhere (probably Amazon).
- After doing this for six years, and building from $25K in our first year to $320K last year, we finally have grown the locally purchasing to more work than our technical services staff can handle, especially our acquisitions clerk. Local purchasing takes more time because it requires more steps. Titles and ISBNs must be interpreted on local receipts (handwriting, math errors, missing info, etc), copies must be made of small, easily-lost register tapes, then each title on each invoice must be entered manually. On the processing end, most items require more processing by our clerks, whereas the big vendors can affix covers on graphic novels, re-case CDs and DVDs, and add Mylar jackets to hardcover books. Because our director prioritizes local purchasing, we are now looking into hiring more staff to help keep materials moving through technical services in a timely manner.
- Any questions?
- If you want to try this and you run into problems or questions, please feel free to contact me.