BUILD COLLABORATIVE SUCCESS WITH VENDORS AND PUBLISHERS
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Library-Vendor Relationships; Presentation at NCTGP 2015 Annual Meeting
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BUILD COLLABORATIVE SUCCESS WITH VENDORS AND PUBLISHERS
- 1. Collaborate for Success How to make friends and improve access to your library resources
- 2. Saint Mary’s College of CA Moraga, California 4000 FTE High Undergraduate: Liberal Arts Master’s Large: Business Education
- 3. SMC Library Staff invested in access • Catalog Librarians • Electronic Resource Manager • Reference Librarians • Periodical Manager • Instruction Librarians • Interlibrary Loan Manager • Acquisitions Manager • Your Face Here
- 4. Our Partners: Vendor Representatives Imagine the best vendor representative What one trait characterizes this person? We’ll collectively create the behavioral description to hire the best representative Respond at PollEv.com/lindawobbe or Text LINDAWOBBE to 37607 once to join, then text your message
- 9. Solution: Refuse to buy new content*
- 11. Solution: Work up the hierarchy*
- 16. Problem: Databases designed to sell
- 21. Solution: Ask for what you want
- 24. Opportunity: Trials and beta testing*
- 26. Solution: You! Feedback that counts Trouble Tickets Work up the hierarchy Vendor visits Power of the collective: committees and Discussion Lists
- 27. Solution: You! More feedback that counts Licenses Trials and Beta Testing Advisory Boards Standards Committees Marketing Feedback
- 28. Solution: *Vendor Representatives Poll Results: What defines a great vendor representative? https://www.polleverywhere.com/free_text_polls/x oESKYx0D8a80nT Empathetic Responsive Listening Intellectual Curiosity Inquiring Mind Honesty
- 29. Solution: Partner with Vendor Representatives Poll Results: Do these same traits define a Librarian vendors want to work with? https://www.polleverywhere.com/free_text_polls/x oESKYx0D8a80nT Empathetic Responsive Listening Intellectual Curiosity Inquiring Mind Honesty
- 30. Solution: Collaboration We make a difference Empowered - we can make a difference Partner with your representatives Band together - committees, discussion lists, consortia Don’t be silent
- 31. Thank you! Slides will be posted on SlideShare http://www.slideshare.net/lindawobbe Paper is on Google Docs and linked from Slideshare https://docs.google.com/document/d/1y7qLKGIY TfpciuJZD7QUIOkPcKQT3idKis2y- lbhVF0/edit?usp=sharing Questions or comments?
- 32. References ANSI/NISO. (2012). SERU : A Shared Electronic Resource Understanding, (May). Brooks, S. (2006). Introduction: The importance of open communication between libraries and vendors. Journal of Library Administration, 44(3-4, March 2015), 1–4. doi:10.1300/J111v44n03-01 Burke, R. (2014). [philosophy of working with vendors]. NASIG Core Competencies for Electronic Resource Librarians. final version. (2013). National Information Standards Organization. (n.d.). Retrieved April 23, 2015, from http://www.niso.org/home/ Section 508 Of The Rehabilitation Act. 29 U.S.C. 794d (1998). USA. Section508 Laws | Section508.gov. (n.d.). Retrieved April 23, 2015, from http://www.section508.gov/section508-laws Trainor, C., & Price, J. (2010). Digging into the Data. Library Technology Reports, October, 15–26. US Department of Justice. The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and Revised ADA Regulations Implementing Title II and Title III, 1990 Laws/Regulations 1–51 (2014). Wong, E. (2015). [personal communication].
Editor's Notes
- Thank you so much for that kind introduction. And thank you all for your attention as I share some stories and techniques from the Library perspective for working with vendors and publishers. I’m the Head of Collection Management
- at Saint Mary’s College in Moraga, through the tunnel and far away, a medium sized university with a liberal-arts undergraduate program and what Carnegie classification calls large graduate programs in Education and Business. SMC’s total FTE is about 4,000. Collection Management at our institution includes Electronic Resources, Periodicals, Acquisitions and Collection Development. That means that Collection Management bridges public and technical services, which is where I feel at home, a foot in each world.
- Today we are going to celebrate the library and librarians and library staff, meaning Your library, librarians and staff and our important, essential role in assessing and improving access to e-resources. We are on the front lines of understanding the complex interaction of resources and bibliographic tools and lists and layers and linking and whether they actually work or don’t work for the students, faculty and staff we are desperately attempting to serve. We are all paying significant amounts of money for resources, discovery tools, cataloging systems and link resolvers. And we are spending countless hours on catalog and knowledge-base maintenance. Today we are going to give ourselves a pat on the back for also taking the time to build relationships, send in trouble tickets, serve as beta sites, and serve on committees to give feedback as part of the continuous metadata improvement cycle. Here you see Saint Mary’s Catalogers, Electronic Resources, Acquisitions, Periodicals, Interlibrary Loan staff, Reference & Instruction Librarians who have all contributed and made the extra effort to improve student, faculty and staff access to library resources. Your faces are here, too.
- Our partners: vendor representatives, technical support personnel, your IT folks, vendor marketing people. When we know what is wrong, when we know what we wish we could change, such as how the search engine could be made more useful or the MARC records could be made more accurate, sadly we can’t make any improvements or changes on our own. We need someone on the product side. Someone on the vendor side. Someone else. So, if you don’t mind whipping out your cell phones and laptops, I’m going to ask you to participate in a quick poll. What makes a good partner on the publisher or vendor side? If you would - take a moment to consider - your favorite - vendor representative, customer account specialist, technical service specialist, or whatever title your favorite primary publisher or vendor contact might have. What trait or behavior characterizes that person? If you were hiring that person, what is the one thing that is the most important skill or background that would have moved that person to the “hire now” category? Please take a few moments to think of that favorite vendor-side person and the one thing that makes them special and answer the poll on my poll everywhere site. Respond at PollEv.com/lindawobbe or Text LINDAWOBBE to 37607 once to join, then text your message I’ll give you time to respond, then we’ll take a look at the poll results a little later on in the presentation to create the perfect vendor representative profile
- Product designers, product developers, vendor information technology people. Somewhere on the vendor or publisher’s team are the decision-makers and people who can actually make possible the changes you are hoping for. Sometimes I want to find “product developer” on the Contact Us page. Why is it that this is not very likely! These folks are the VP’s for Product Development at the 3 aggregators. The job is available at Ithaka/JSTOR. We might love talking with these guys, apparently, but we really want to talk to the people in charge of specific products. So what are ways to effectively communicate to the people who can really make a difference? There are a lot of different strategies. I’m sure I haven’t come up with all of them. I’m going to illustrate the strategies with examples and stories from my colleagues. I’m sure you have plenty of stories that are just like mine, that prove it is possible to make changes and to encourage you to take charge and make a difference. It isn’t just someone else’s job, it belongs to all of us. Of course every story of success about making a platform change, or improving a knowledge-base holds the story of a breakdown.
- Knowledge-base errors: Bad links, wrong titles, incomplete lists, inability to select from a fixed list your actual subscribed content, slow updates for takeover titles, inability to upload correct lists, unresponsive support Example. Almost too numerous to count, really. Research has shown that Open URL fails 30% of the time.(Trainor ,C. & Price, J., 2010) Why? Sometimes it is a knowledge-base error. The SMC team is well-trained and links are available on all pages to report errors as they are discovered. Errors are reported by email to the Electronic Resources Manager. Big problems are recorded in a blog posting, and a status message attached to the title. A recent example was for freely available content from journal Anesthesiology. Our Interlibrary Loan manager reported trouble accessing the journal through our SerialsSolutions e-Journal portal. I remember thinking, you can just Google it. But then, students are so well taught to rely on Open URL, we have to make every effort to correct problems when we know about them. And then thinking, Oh, right, SerialsSolutions will correct a link in a list of freely available titles. But, OK, I decided to put in a trouble ticket, and gave SerialsSolutions the correct url. Resolution. Submit those trouble tickets! SerialsSolutions staff almost immediately - within 2 hours - reported they had made the change. 24-hours to see the change in the eJournal portal.
- Knowledge-base errors: Bad links, wrong titles, incomplete lists, inability to select from a fixed list your actual subscribed content, slow updates for takeover titles, inability to upload correct lists, unresponsive support Example. Almost too numerous to count, really. Research has shown that Open URL fails 30% of the time.(Trainor ,C. & Price, J., 2010) Why? Sometimes it is a knowledge-base error. The SMC team is well-trained and links are available on all pages to report errors as they are discovered. Errors are reported by email to the Electronic Resources Manager. Big problems are recorded in a blog posting, and a status message attached to the title. A recent example was for freely available content from journal Anesthesiology. Our Interlibrary Loan manager reported trouble accessing the journal through our SerialsSolutions e-Journal portal. I remember thinking, you can just Google it. But then, students are so well taught to rely on Open URL, we have to make every effort to correct problems when we know about them. And then thinking, Oh, right, SerialsSolutions will correct a link in a list of freely available titles. But, OK, I decided to put in a trouble ticket, and gave SerialsSolutions the correct url. Resolution. Submit those trouble tickets! SerialsSolutions staff almost immediately - within 2 hours - reported they had made the change. 24-hours to see the change in the eJournal portal.
- Browser quirks and incompatibilities, plug-ins and 3rd party software that must be downloaded, but can’t be because of library computer restrictions; java security concerns blocking java functionality in databases. problem: Browser plugin failure. Let me tell a story about crazy browser plugin issues. Last summer our IT department dropped off - in my office - a PC and a Mac from which they intended to clone all the public workstations in the Library. They gave me and my accidental office-mate - our newly hired librarian - administrative access. We were told to download all the browsers and applications and plugins necessary to make the Library databases work properly. OK, that was a little much, to just drop off the computers and tell us to get to work. But that is a different story. So, we went to work going through our documented list of all the plugins and settings we needed. Until we got to Taylor & Francis eBooks. I don’t know how many of you have purchased T&F eBooks on their platform. Some titles allow multiple/unlimited users, and other are restricted. The restricted-access books have several options to view. We discovered that the newest version of the FileOpen plugin that somehow manages to restrict access based on the Digital Rights Management or DRM for each title wasn’t compatible with the product. That one sentence represents half
- a summer of emails to the vendor representative, and to the technical support team. Screenshots. Screencasts. We heard “no one else has a problem”. They were sure we were nuts. Don’t be afraid to be called a nut, by the way. Eventually they discovered we weren’t nuts. The OLD version of File Open had to be used. So, T&F changed the instructions on their site to link to the old version of File Open. We continued to complain every chance we got, and told our poor eBooks rep, Susan Sanders we were never purchasing another T&F eBook because of the DRM, which even in the best of times the DRM worked so forcefully that there were eBooks we had purchased that we never once could access during testing because they were always “in use”. Finally, and I’m sure as evidence that little Saint Mary’s wasn’t the only institution complaining and refusing to purchase any T&F eBooks ever again, T&F recently announced they will no longer offer DRM-restricted books on this platform, and most already purchased books have been converted to DRM-free. Whew. Strategy: - refusal to purchase additional content. With an asterisk. Time to acknowledge we were right...3 months. Until the feature was removed...8 months. Number of emails, calls, complaints to the Reps? A lot.
- EBSCO Link resolver failing. Saint Mary’s recently decided to switch from SerialsSolutions to the EBSCO Full-Text finder Open URL link resolver. After spending months struggling with uploading data, it was determined that we had to spend a few more months to input our print holdings manually. Many staff spent months on that project. Finally, the switch-over date arrived during the quiet week between January Term and Spring Semester. Almost immediately trouble reports began to roll in. A miserable weekend was spent rolling back to SerialsSolutions. Why were all the failures being reported? Messages on the EDS Partners list revealed most EBSCO users were using the older LinkSource link resolver, so no insight was found there. Trouble tickets sent to our beleaguered EBSCO Technical Support Customer Account Specialist found that he was unable to discover a reason for our woes. I began to pester our rep, our former rep who was the VP Sales for the Western Region. They also put me in touch with someone at the developer level. Wow, she could trouble-shoot anything! Um, but the answer was that other service providers did not put their dates in the standard format that OpenURL standards call for. Oh, gee, I’m going to contact all of our 300 database providers and 1,000’s of e-journal publishers and ask them to put their OpenURL dates in a format EBSCO’s link resolver can handle? I doubt it. Project Dead. I talked to another VP who formerly was my rep’s boss. He said, Oh No, we won’t roll this out for any other customers. And, they’d send the programming specialist to see me in person. OK, Eric Frierson, what is going on!? April 30. That is the date the fix will be rolled out. Time will tell if Full Text Finder is a real openurl linker or not yet ready for prime time. Strategy: Constant Complaining. Up the Chain. Remember Names. Keep Email Addresses.
- dates in a format EBSCO’s link resolver can handle? I doubt it. Project Dead. I ran into another VP at SCELC Vendor Day Bowling Night who said, “Oh No, I’m afraid this product isn’t ready for prime time. We’ve halted all roll-outs.” He sent the programming specialist to meet with us in person. OK, Eric Frierson, what is going on!? April 30. That is the date the fix will be rolled out. That is when Full Text Finder will be able to handle non-standard date formats. Time will tell if Full Text Finder is a real openurl linker or back to the drawing board. Strategy. Yes, pull out all the stops. With an asterisk. Trouble tickets. More Trouble Tickets. Email your rep, their boss, everyone you know. Up the chain. Corner the VP at the conference social event while they are drinking a beer. Or a tequila. And pray. In fact, I think I’ll send some more emails about this problem. Why doesn’t FTF put land you at the journal page when there is a metadata format failure??? OK, this story isn’t over.
- Mobile platform breakdowns. I know a few people in the room heard my Charleston Conference Presentation on the miserable situation with mobile platforms. Mobile-specific sites that force you from the full site. Responsive design with only 3 sizes which detect my laptop as a tablet. Apps for which you need an account created on the main site to download, and for which you need some code or token which expires in a few months. It is the wild west. And our users are relying on their phones for everything! And we can’t deliver our wealth of resources because of this crazy quilt of mobile randomness. Example. Taylor & Francis’ new mobile platform. I’m sorry to be picking on T&F. Partly they come are in the stories because they do respond. I checked out T&F’s new mobile platform when it was announced last year. Not the kind of app you get in the app store, but what is called a web app. It downloads automatically when you access the main site on a mobile device. But ugh. What was wrong? There was tiny type that said “switch switch”. I emailed my rep, who relayed my comments to the product manager. She said, no one else has this problem. The rep had to teach me how to do screen shots from my phone so I could show them what I was talking about. It wasn’t a pretend problem. If you touched enough of the empty space on the screen eventually the “real” web app engaged. But there was some old version or half-designed version that got in the way first. In the meantime, possibly because I registered as a mobile user, Taylor & Francis recruited me to join them on a Charleston mobile platform panel. Which meant I was in direct contact with the developer! She was in the U.K., but I did finally get her attention on the matter. Resolution. Well, the T&F web app is pretty nice, you can authenticate as usual from the library’s site and/or get a token. And, the “switch switch” error was fixed about a week before the Charleston Conference. Total elapsed time. 8 months. Strategy. The rep put me in touch with the product developer. I volunteered to speak at a conference with her. I threatened to depict their bad app in my presentation. Pull out all the stops. Don’t give up. With an asterisk.
- on the screen eventually the “real” web app engaged. But there was some old version or half-designed version that got in the way first. In the meantime, possibly because I registered as a mobile user, Taylor & Francis recruited me to join them on a Charleston mobile platform panel. Which meant I was in direct contact with the developer! She was in the U.K., but I did finally get her attention on the matter. Resolution. Now T&F web app is pretty nice, you can authenticate as usual from the library’s site and/or get a token. And, the “switch switch” error was fixed about a week before the Charleston Conference. Total elapsed time. 8 months. Strategy. The rep put me in touch with the product developer. I volunteered to speak at a conference with her. I threatened to depict their bad app in my presentation. Pull out all the stops. Don’t give up. With an asterisk.
- Breakdown: Lack of compliance with Accessibility standards and lack of documentation. Problem. Kanopy streaming media platform. I hope you have all taken the time to listen to the wonderful presentations by the Kanopy reps. Originally from Australia, but now based in San Francisco, Kanopy offers beautiful quality streaming of major documentary productions. They’ll host your content and offer a search & find service, negotiating with producers when streaming or even a DVD isn’t available. I am a member of the SCELC or Statewide California Electronic Library Consortium’s Product Review Committee. Promising new products are presented at our quarterly meetings for our feedback. Kanopy’s presentation blew us away. I asked my usual question “Tell us how your platform complies with accessibility standards, including ADA and Section 508 requirements.” Unfortunately, the representatives invited to present to us had no answer for us. This caused a fuss among committee members. I spoke to the representatives privately at the end of our meeting explaining some expectations of streaming products, such as transcripts with text-to-speech capability, captioning. Using a graphic for navigation, which can’t be read by a screen reader.
- These features are important for all SCELC libraries, and a statement of compliance is a mandatory element in SCELC contracts. And, because Cal State University Libraries often partner with SCELC on database purchases, and products sold to state institutions are required to comply with Section 508 requirements, I can claim a direct loss of sales if there is no compliance. The two representatives were flustered and frustrated, and made statements like “this is the first time anyone has even mentioned this to us!” Later, through postings to an accessibility discussion list, I learned that Kanopy was working with a large institution to modify their product to comply with W3C recommendations. Solution. Band together. Join committees and discussion lists and advisory boards and standards committees and use that collective voice. With an asterisk. Which committees count? Almost any discussion list or group you join can use the collective to give you a larger voice. Use the group to raise awareness and bring about compliance with standards. Vendors say “you are the only one who cares”, test that out by asking your group. You are a member of SCELC? Anyone at a SCELC library can be on SCELC discussion lists, or review the proposals. .
- Breakdown: Database designed to sell content to non-subscribers, doesn’t work with discovery systems, doesn’t leverage open url, and can’t be restricted to your holdings. Example: Reference eBook platforms that can’t be restricted to your library’s purchased content. For this example, I could tell a story about Oxford Reference Online, or Routledge Handbooks Online, but because it is a little more dramatic, I’ll use SAGE Knowledge. I remember the first time several of us sat in a room with my laptop projecting onto a wall peering between file cabinets at the brand new SAGE Knowledge interface between. We couldn’t believe what we were seeing, and our rep, Mary Rose Fink at that time, called the product developer and put her on speaker-phone so we could hear her tell us that was really the way the search engine worked, and no, there was no way to restrict the search results to our purchased content. Well, in this case we couldn’t live without SAGE reference content, so we decided we couldn’t refuse to purchase. So we lived with our disappointment until a few years later. Our new CQ representative, and SAGE interim rep, stopped by to visit, and felt the full fury of SMC librarians. Mauricio Elwin mentioned SAGE Knowledge and heard from the Education librarian: “Oh, we love the content,” she said, “but I never link to the database or tell students to search it because it can’t be restricted to SMC content. What is the use of us buying content when the interface serves up chapters that they have to buy? ” Mauricio didn’t miss a beat, and promised to take our concern immediately to the attention of the product developers. The next time we heard from Mauricio he said “You now have the ability to limit search results to your purchased content”. Strategy. Use group presentations to air complaints. With an asterisk. While browse and search results are limited to our purchased content, paywalled titles still show up as “related”.
- Our new CQ representative, and SAGE interim rep, stopped by to visit, and felt the full fury of SMC librarians. Mauricio Elwin mentioned SAGE Knowledge and heard from the Education librarian: “Oh, we love the content,” she said, “but I never link to the database or tell students to search it because it can’t be restricted to SMC content. What is the use of us buying content when the interface serves up chapters that they have to buy? ” Mauricio didn’t miss a beat, and promised to take our concern immediately to the attention of the product developers. The next time we heard from Mauricio he said “You now have the ability to limit search results to your purchased content”. Strategy. Use group presentations to air complaints. With an asterisk. While browse and search results are limited to our purchased content, paywalled titles still show up as “related”.
- Breakdown: No MARC records or unusable ones. My colleague Elise Wong (2015), whom you may know, tells me vendor records are typically inferior to records created by libraries. The quality of the vendor records are more or less equal because of their batch processes. The vendors who submit their records to OCLC promptly are better than the ones who delay their submission or might not even submit them at all. Bad records from Naxos, Alexander Street, Films on Demand, Springer Solution: Elise complains about "bad records" to the reps who claim that they will pass on the feedback to their content support team. A bit of an asterisk. The only ones that get on her nerves are Naxos (a lot of work to convert MARCXML to MARC), and Films on Demand, Alexander Street because they don't provide class numbers.
- Solution: Elise complains about "bad records" to the reps who claim that they will pass on the feedback to their content support team. A bit of an asterisk. The only ones that get on her nerves are Naxos (a lot of work to convert MARCXML to MARC), and Films on Demand, Alexander Street because they don't provide class numbers.
- Opportunity: Licenses. Clauses tell you what your users can and cannot do, disallow copyright protections, restrict ILL, Course Packs, Scholarly sharing and make no commitment to availability, accessibility or mobile access. Problem: While my favorite license horror story is the 44-page license I reviewed on behalf of the SCELC License Review Committee over a Christmas break, let me give a shorter example. Interlibrary Loan and consortial borrowing is such an acceptable part of life for print books. But for eBooks it is hard to imagine how lending could be made possible. Downloading a chapter and sending that through ILL channels is a partially acceptable compromise. When SMC signed our first ebrary license agreement, we added, and they accepted, a clause that allows ILL of a book chapter. Solution. Ask for what you want in licenses. Say it is mandatory for your institution or your consortium or for the state. ebrary’s standard Terms and Conditions now includes several statements allowing Fair Use downloading. The NISO SERU recommended practice includes language regarding chapter ILL, but states there is no standard accepted practice regarding eBook ILL. As a member of the SERU steering committee, that was the closest we could come to a consensus.
- Opportunity: Licenses. Clauses tell you what your users can and cannot do, disallow copyright protections, restrict ILL, Course Packs, Scholarly sharing and make no commitment to availability, accessibility or mobile access. Problem: While my favorite license horror story is the 44-page license I reviewed on behalf of the SCELC License Review Committee over a Christmas break, let me give a shorter example. Interlibrary Loan and consortial borrowing is such an acceptable part of life for print books. But for eBooks it is hard to imagine how lending could be made possible. Downloading a chapter and sending that through ILL channels is a partially acceptable compromise. When SMC signed our first ebrary license agreement, we added, and they accepted, a clause that allows ILL of a book chapter. Solution. Ask for what you want in licenses. Say it is mandatory for your institution or your consortium or for the state. ebrary’s standard Terms and Conditions now includes several statements allowing Fair Use downloading. The NISO SERU recommended practice includes language regarding chapter ILL, but states there is no standard accepted practice regarding eBook ILL. As a member of the SERU steering committee, that was the closest we could come to a consensus.
- Opportunity: Standards. The National Information Standards Organization, the information professionals’ standards board of the American National Standards Institute, has several committees involved in creating metadata standards. You can join a committee or you can participate as standards are being created by giving feedback. You can read the standards. Reading any of these standards, even old standbys like Z39.50 or my nemesis OpenURL Z39.88 is a humbling experience and reveals a mind-numbing level of complexity involved in the creation of standards and the creation of metadata that ‘works’ to connect users to information. Reading these standards will give you an idea of the enormity of the rules publishers are trying to follow. Committees include: Content and Collection Management Topic Committee. Here you will find the syntax for a doi, and even placement guidelines for information on spines. Discovery to Delivery Committee. Active groups include KBART, Open Discovery Initiative, IOTA - Improving OpenURL through analytics. Business Information Topic Committee. Here you will find PIE-J - Presentation and Identification of e-Journals, SUSHI, and SERU, the Shared-e-Resource understanding - an alternative to licensing for electronic resources. I serve on the SERU standing committee. I can attest to the hard work of representing library perspectives on a committee which also includes publisher representatives. A consensus is very difficult to build. Solution: Participation. Not everyone can join a NISO committee, but everyone’s voice can be heard. The NISO committees are dependent on the peer-review process in which draft standards or recommendations must be released to other NISO members for input or ridicule, as the case may be, and then opened up to the general public for the same input, usually by posting on many multiple discussion lists. I can also attest to the painstaking scrutiny each and every comment must be reviewed by the committee, often involving a back and forth conversation until an understanding is reached, and this conversation is part of what the ANSI board reviews prior to allowing a draft standard to become official. I know it is difficult to take the time to read through a new standard and to make comments. But our participation is essential to making sure these standards are workable and meaningful from the Library’s perspective. Because, believe me, publishers are taking the time.
- I can attest to the hard work of representing library perspectives on a committee which also includes publisher representatives. A consensus is very difficult to build. Solution: Participation. Not everyone can join a NISO committee, but everyone’s voice can be heard. The NISO committees are dependent on the peer-review process in which draft standards or recommendations must be released to other NISO members for input or ridicule, as the case may be, and then opened up to the general public for the same input, usually by posting on many multiple discussion lists. I can also attest to the painstaking scrutiny each and every comment must be reviewed by the committee, often involving a back and forth conversation until an understanding is reached, and this conversation is part of what the ANSI board reviews prior to allowing a draft standard to become official. I know it is difficult to take the time to read through a new standard and to make comments. But our participation is essential to making sure these standards are workable and meaningful from the Library’s perspective. Because, believe me, publishers are taking the time.
- Opportunity. Trials and Beta testing. Trials of new products or long-term commitments by serving as a beta test site give an opportunity to give collective feedback and put pressure on vendors to include the features that are most important to you. Saint Mary’s is proud of our willingness to take the time to serve as a beta test site. Kudos to our amazing cataloging team who never balks at an opportunity to download our entire catalog and send it off to test discovery solutions or shared print initiatives or whatever, and participates wholeheartedly in giving feedback. While you may not be able to convince your colleagues of the benefits of serving as a beta test site, everyone can trial a new product and give feedback. Problem. Product not ready for prime time. SMC has served as a beta test site for the APA PsycNet platform, SAGE eKnowledge, EBSCO Discovery Service, and Choice. Solution: Serving as a beta site is a major commitment. Be sure your colleagues are willing to make the time. But even if you don’t have the time or opportunity to serve as a beta site, you can trial a new product and use that opportunity to give feedback. Get together as a group to test out the product as it goes through its various versions. Be prepared to not get everything you want. Gather your notes in a Google document. Test out all of the features and add your comments to the Google doc. Why does it do this when I click here? What do they mean by this? Why can’t I email? Can I get MARC records and can I see an example? Do you comply with standards? Test accessibility. Test the mobile site. Do they participate in Discovery products. Send the document with all of your comments to your rep and the product developer. These examples are from our beta test of the Choice Reviews Online product as it transitioned to the Highwire platform. these screenshots show there is no way to print, display or email the full text of reviews from a list, a feature that was corrected before full release. Please don’t blame us - we did complain that the alerts can only be viewed from on-campus. Rendering them un-usable by faculty who are looking at them from home. For our efforts we got our picture on the cover of Choice!
- Solution: Serving as a beta site is a major commitment. Be sure your colleagues are willing to make the time. But even if you don’t have the time or opportunity to serve as a beta site, you can trial a new product and use that opportunity to give feedback. Get together as a group to test out the product as it goes through its various versions. Be prepared to not get everything you want. Gather your notes in a Google document. Test out all of the features and add your comments to the Google doc. Why does it do this when I click here? What do they mean by this? Why can’t I email? Can I get MARC records and can I see an example? Do you comply with standards? Test accessibility. Test the mobile site. Do they participate in Discovery products. Send the document with all of your comments to your rep and the product developer. These examples are from our beta test of the Choice Reviews Online product as it transitioned to the Highwire platform. these screenshots show there is no way to print, display or email the full text of reviews from a list, a feature that was corrected before full release. Please don’t blame us - we did complain that the alerts can only be viewed from on-campus. Rendering them un-usable by faculty who are looking at them from home. For our efforts we got our picture on the cover of Choice!
- The solution! You! Your mission, if you choose to accept it: Take responsibility. You will make things better by stepping up. Here are some of the solutions I’ve illustrated today. You make the effort every day! Give yourself credit. Your colleagues appreciate it, your library users appreciate it, and the publishers and vendors appreciate it.
- Everyone can give feedback that makes a difference.
- Your partners, the asterisks: In all the “solutions” presented above, the asterisk is an involved, caring Vendor representative. In my experience, the vendor partnership is essential. They can get information to the right person. Poll: OK, let’s look at the poll results. Think of your favorite vendor representative, either customer support or technical support representative. What makes that person the best ever??? Poll results: https://www.polleverywhere.com/free_text_polls/xoESKYx0D8a80nT Poll turned around: I’m curious, if we turned around the poll and asked what behavioral traits would make me a person my rep cares about? This really matters at Saint Mary’s, where we can’t say, hey, we have millions of dollars to spend. So, let’s see if that makes sense. How can I be the person my rep wants to care about? Are these the traits my reps would choose if I asked them to design the ideal Librarian?
- Your partners, the asterisks: Partnerships with vendors. SCELC’s view. I asked my friend Rick Burke, the Executive Director of SCELC, the consortium of California private academic libraries - nearly every private academic library except for one large one in the Bay Area. He says Making friends makes a difference. Vendors need librarians and vice-versa. Building a trust relationship and creating a long-term business relationship requires transparency, meaning frank and honest communication. Know the hierarchy and go higher up to achieve what you need. (Burke, R. 2015) Sam Brooks (2006), Executive Vice President of EBSCO Information Services echoes this philosophy. “ In a nutshell, libraries can provide better service to their end-users if vendors can better equip the libraries to do so. In order for vendors to accomplish this task, they often rely heavily upon libraries for the insight and direction to improve products and services.” Recently released NASIG Core Competencies for Electronic Resource Librarians (2013) includes several statements emphasizing the importance of the vendor-librarian relationship. My favorite dyad: The Electronic Resources Librarian demonstrates effective communication by 4.2 Synthesizing easy to understand summaries of complex and ambiguous phenomena. ERLs often serve as the library’s liaison with external stakeholders such as vendors or institutional information technology staff. 4.3 Explaining and instructing clearly and concisely, when and as needed; rises above personal feelings and frustrations in order to provide the best possible services and resources to end users.
- Empowered and through collaboration - we can make a difference build a trust relationship with your representatives band together - committees, discussion lists, consortia don’t be silent
- Questions?
- References thanks to those who studies