Hi Robert,

We decided to start circumventing our serials vendor and do all new ordering directly with publishers.  Maybe this speaks volumes about our particular vendor, but I’ve found that I do the same amount of work either way so we might as well save a little money by not paying a third party.  Some publishers send a crazy number of renewal notices, so that is a little bit of a pain, but otherwise I’d say its worked out for the best. 

 

There were a few cases where I had more luck getting in contact with a small publisher than the vendor did, or the publisher was more up front with me about publications on hiatus or cancelled than the vendor.  I can’t say for sure that the vendor had the same information, but I found it disappointing that they were trying to renew titles that I knew were cancelled. We now have access to more periodicals electronically as a result as well.  Many of them included a limited number of electronic licenses with a print subscription, but we never knew because we didn’t specifically request it from the vendor.

 

I’m a solo librarian at a small state government agency, and our serials still dominate a lot of my time. But again, it seems like I spend about the same amount of time on them as I did with the vendor.  However, now I feel like I have more control over it and that I have more complete information about all our subscriptions.  I might feel differently if we had a larger collection.  

 

Best of luck!

Jennifer

 

 

 

Jennifer Palmisano

Librarian | Utilities and Transportation Commission

jpalmisa@utc.wa.gov | 360-664-1199

 

UTC Library Services | PO Box 47250 | Olympia, WA  98504-7250 | http://www.utc.wa.gov/

 

“Libraries are about people, not books or technology.” – R. David Lankes

 

From: Serials in Libraries Discussion Forum [mailto:SERIALST@LISTSERV.NASIG.ORG] On Behalf Of Robert Terrio
Sent: Wednesday, August 27, 2014 5:40 AM
To: SERIALST@LISTSERV.NASIG.ORG
Subject: [SERIALST] Ordering direct from publishers

 

 

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