I love discussion and collaboration, but right now I’m most excited about seeing public action.

I’m not aware of libraries’ having said no quite so publicly in the past, or of a situation in which so many libraries decided not to purchase products or services from a specific vendor.

Yeah, this is a problem. Libraries can be reticent, too reticent. When we say no we need to do it as consortia, because like you mentioned, vendors have more customers and more clout that one library does. It’s the collective that will have the most impact.

Recently in Oregon, Newsbank just announced that it has aquired exclusive license for archives to The Oregonian, one of our major newspapers. The price for these archives has increased, and now libraries are either paying more for the product or dropping it. There may very well be only one library in Oregon that can afford this online archival access. And this model will continue.

It’s going to take a lot of discussion and collaboration and very public action to get more favorable terms (in general).

Thank you for expressing this so eloquently.

I’ll add: libraries should want vendors to think this way. If they didn’t, the overall situation for library users would likely be worse. The solution to problems, when they arise, is not for corporations to be more empathetic or less motivated by profit. The solution is for libraries to kick harder. To which I’ll add: the corporations should want libraries to think this way. The smart ones do.

Walking away from “the Big O” or a “Big Pig” or an ILS isn’t easy. If it were easy, these products would be better and cheaper. But we can, and we can do it effectively. Libraries do it all the time: in general, the products and services being marketed to libraries today replaced inferior products and services libraries walked away from in the past.

In addition, better or cheaper or more open products are being developed and introduced pretty consistently. Supporting these products sometimes means supporting two products at once, as Kuali OLE libraries are doing, or as any library must do when transitioning from one ILS to another. Or sometimes it means educating faculty about open access, which is a lot of effort and can be expensive if it requires additional staffing, but OA is working so well in so many different situations that it’s hard to argue that it can’t be done. Which isn’t to say that going without or boycotting or refusing to sign confidentiality agreements or going with open source or educating faculty about open access is a universal answer, but these kind of efforts give us room for negotiation. And if we don’t create room for negotiation we get… well, we get what we deserve.

I never meant to suggest librarians who work for vendors are nice people or that vendors are nice, useful, or sympathetic (or that they aren’t). But they’re frequently as good at librarianship as library-based librarians are, and very possibly a lot better. And they’re often just as keen to figure out the best way to serve library users. But if libraries keep buying their products, they really have no way of knowing how to weigh feature X vs. feature Y, so they’re going to trust their own judgement.

On the other hand, as vendors become more monopolistic, libraries feel (perhaps erroneously) that they have little choice and *must* purchase the product. In those cases, there’s not a lot of room for negotiation or pushing a vendor out of business. My concern isn’t that “librarians who work at vendors who aren’t all that interested in long-term relationships” – I’m sure they are. But when we’re unhappy with them – how do we divorce, say, OCLC? We can’t; not effectively. Ariel and Odyssey are clunky and terrible; but we can’t walk away from them because that’s what ILL requires. ILS systems are more alike than different, and requesting fixes or customizations are routinely denied or delayed, causing libraries to create time consuming and inefficient workarounds.

I don’t mind assuming the best of people, I just don’t think that assuming the librarians who work with vendors are nice people leads to a logical conclusion that vendors are nice/useful/sympathetic entities.

it always helps to remember their profit motive when trying to understand what they do, and what they value

Selling things their customers will buy? Ideally repeatedly? And maybe like enough to recommend to peers?

Of course there are librarians who work at vendors who aren’t all that interested in long-term relationships, or who simply don’t get it. The same is true for librarians who work at libraries. Maybe the statement I made above (the one Colleen quoted) should carry the caveat that I always try to assume the best about people. With the additional caveat that it’s working really well for me.

Here’s the thing about profit motives. While there are plenty of products marketed to libraries I wouldn’t consider purchasing because they either don’t fit our needs, are accompanied by overly restrictive use policies, or because their price/value is a bad match for our “needs/budget,” the decision not to purchase these products is rarely complex or time-consuming. Yet many of these products continue to be available year after year, often in much the same form. So libraries are buying them. Probably many libraries. If they weren’t, the vendors’ profit motive would force them to alter their marketing.

Personally, I think libraries are too shy about voting with their wallets, and far too shy about doing so publicly. The folks Colleen is talking with about the design of services and software… if they aren’t making sales, at least one of three things is going to happen: 1) they’re going to be replaced; 2) their employer is going to change its products; or 3) their employer is going to go out of business. If libraries are buying “bad” products or getting poor customer service, they’re delaying those three outcomes, perhaps indefinitely. Which, in my view, makes libraries even more culpable than their vendors.

And even if “a lot of the best librarians work for vendors,” it does not necessarily follow that their goals and motivations as a vendor employee are the same as mine as a librarian.

Agreed. Especially when it comes to the publishers Dorothea Salo has memorably called the Big Pigs, they seem quite intent on killing the golden goose. Sure the individuals who work for vendors can be admirable in many ways, but I find that it always helps to remember their profit motive when trying to understand what they do, and what they value.

But I can’t anymore. Having been more involved with talking with vendors about the design of services and software – and hoping that the fact that some of the folks we were talking to used to be librarians – I have been baffled at what they failed to consider at all, failed to take librarians seriously about in terms of what we need in order to properly function, and what they did not think about in terms of how our users use the systems.

The “I used to be a librarian” and “We’re here to serve your users” from vendors are not going to cut any more slack with me until I see it demonstrated.

And even if “a lot of the best librarians work for vendors,” it does not necessarily follow that their goals and motivations as a vendor employee are the same as mine as a librarian.