Category: vendors

A "Factini", given out on SLA exhibit hall floor

SCENE :

EXT – MEAN STREETS OF CRYSTAL CITY, VIRGINIA – NIGHT. I’m attending the Computers in Libraries conference.  My conference husband and I were walking a friend  back to her hotel (which was located approximately in West Virginia) for the night.  We are approached by a couple drunkenly swaying towards us.

Drunk woman: Heeeeeeyyy….

Drunk man: Oh, gawd….it’s some more of those f**king librarians!

The drunk couple then stumbled on towards the Crystal City Hyatt.

My friends and I looked at each other.  “Did they…did they just say what I thought they said?”  I assumed that they were people staying in our hotel, tired of tripping over laptop cords and the myriad other inconveniences caused by several hundred librarians taking over a smallish hotel.  We ran into them again later that night at the Hyatt bar and, upon seeing them in the light,  realized that they were vendor reps working the CiL exhibit hall.

END SCENE

As you’ve probably noticed, Gentle Reader, I think a lot about vendor relations and libraries.   Even so, the above Computers in Libraries experience was the first time it ever occurred to me that vendors might not like librarians. I mean, librarians are the good guys!  They’re the big, mean corporations marching through our budgets like Sherman through Georgia! What do they have to be grumpy about?

Last month I attended the Special Libraries Association annual meeting.   This was my first time attending the full SLA conference and it was an eye opening experience.  From the exhibit hall Factinis to the vendor sponsored receptions to vendor reps attending programming to the fact that elected president of the organization WORKS FOR A VENDOR and at least one board member of the legal division does as well…well, my mind was blown at how much vendors were woven in throughout the SLA fabric.  And you know what? I kinda liked it.

I guess it’s because so many of the SLA membership come from a corporate/business/law firm background, but there’s a very matter-of-fact business relationship with vendors at SLA.  The vendor-librarian relationship felt like one of equals.  It was very refreshing.  I was able to discuss product issues at several points throughout the conference with representatives and develop personal relationships with them – which was much preferable to the gauntlet run that the AALL exhibit hall feels like.

I can’t help but feel that many librarians have a major martyrdom complex when it come to vendors.  They’re the big evil corporations and we’re the saintly librarians who are just trying to help people after all and isn’t so awful that they keep taking advantage of us?  I am guilty of feeling this way myself.

So, yes, over the past six months, I’ve had a bit of a change of heart about vendors.  The “love” in title of this post is a bit of a misnomer, as I still don’t *love* vendors -  I just couldn’t resist the movie allusion. I have, however, gained a certain respect for vendors.

Now, vendors are far from perfect.  They still pump out a bunch of inferior products at ridiculous prices and the time has come where libraries and other cultural institutions can replicate much of their offerings better and cheaper.  And some of their business practices cause me to give them the old side eye.  And I get damn near giddy when I read about things like the University of PEI fighting rising subscription prices. But they’re not ZOMG EVIL and an antagonistic relationship with them is only going to harm libraries in the end.  Mutual respect, open communication and equal partnerships are what the librarian-vendor relationship needs.

Because just as it’s getting to a point where librarians can do without some of the services traditionally offered by vendors, vendors are able to do end runs around librarians and get directly to our patrons.  Exhibit A: Westlaw’s “Are you on a first name basis with your librarian?” advertisement from last year.  And how many of you librarians have had students come up to the ref desk and mentioned that they purchased a PDF of an article that we could have gotten them for free via ILL?

Is hanging out with vendors at conferences going to solve all of these problems? No. But I think if we approach vendors as equals instead of expecting them to treat us like customers (with the attendant “the customer is always right!” mentality) we’ll have a better relationship and better products.  And as for the tired meme that librarians who go work for vendors (and, to a certain extent, professional associations) have “gone to the dark side” or “sold out”…*pfft*  Again, vendors (and orgs) having an understanding of what the daily needs and desires of the library community are can only be an improvement over them trying to figure it out via grumpy listserv postings or annual meeting focus groups.

(Hmm..maybe I should have titled this post “Vendors are from Mars, Librarians are from Venus”.)

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that there’s currently a dust-in LawLibraryLand over AALL’s Committee on Vendor Relations and the appointment of a vendor representative.  (See LLB posts here and here for starters)  I’m not sure what the right answer is, but I can say that in my years as an AALL member, I haven’t felt like CRIV was any different than any of the other AALL committees. Perhaps a single AALL representative to vendors (much like the AALL Government relations office) would allow for long term relationship building which a rotating committee roster simply cannot provide.  I also think AALL should take a page from SLA and have more involvement from vendors at all levels of the organization.  Close your eyes for a minute and imagine Anne Ellis as president of AALL…crazy right? But why is that?

So, again, I don’t have all (or any) answers, but I am planning on using the second half of 2010 to approach vendors as an equal partner in the information game instead of demanding that they be nice to me and wondering why they are treating a business relationship as just that.

Earlier this week, I saw a report about Thomson closing Banks-Baldwin’s Cleveland office. That got me thinking about all the mergers that have taken place in the legal information world over time and, being of the USA Today Infographic Generation, I was hoping that there would be a visual representation out there of them, similar to Marshall Breeding’s ILS merger chart, so I could better understand what has happened.

There wasn’t.

So I made one.

This information is surprisingly hard to find.  I relied heavily on Ken Svengalis’ Legal Information Buyer’s Guide and the CRIV Publisher’s List (originally started by Rob Richards, who also helped point me in the right direction) to piece together the histories of these companies.  This is a beta release, meaning still a work in progress, meaning I hope there are not (but there probably are) some mistakes.  I hope to improve upon it in the future.  If you see any errors or additions that should be made, drop me a comment or email.

ETA: Greg Lambert has updated it to include more types of legal info providers AND it’s open in such a way that others can edit it.  Great job! Check it out.

I’m starting to wonder how  many times I can say to myself “…so that happened.” in a week.

I’ve just survived my first week of the fall semester.  And if you’re one of my students reading this, let me assure you that the first week back transition is just as hard on law school faculty and staff as it is on you. I’ve had tons of ILLs to process, longer Reference Desk hours, lectures to prepare (oh, yeah, turns out I will be teaching 1L legal research this fall…there’s some sturm und drang about that too, but I”ll wait until another post to talk about the *dramatic pause* laptop ban) and welcoming receptions to attend, all while trying to navigate through a town/campus who’s population seemingly quadrupled in 24 hours.

Adding to the drama of the week, on Monday Westlaw sent out an advertisement aimed at lawyers with the headline “Are you on a first name basis with the librarian?” And then goes on to say, “If so, chances are you are spending too much time at the library.  What you need is fast, reliable research you can access right in your office.  And all it takes is West.”  Screnshot here.

As my Grandpa Heller would say, that went over like a lead Zepplin with the librarian crowd.

There was outrage and pearl clutching on Law-Lib and twitter about it.  I tried to not make too many comments until I saw the actual ad or heard an official response from West but I did get a screen grab of the ad and posted it on Twitter/twitpic in the interest of sharing information. You can’t imagine how freaked out I was to keep seeing “mentions” notifications on Tweetdeck with people all over the country retweeting it and then adding their own commentary. For the record, I never said Westlaw “sucked” or “was evil.”  (Also, at about the 400th view of the pic, I noticed that the other two pictures visible were of me and a squirrel and me and the Butter Cow at the Ohio State Fair.  *sigh* Professionalism! I haz it! )  So, anyway, it turns out it was in fact a real ad, and West feels terribly about hurting our feelings.

Well, okay then!

I’ve mentioned before that I have complicated feelings about the vendor/librarian relationship.  I personally try to not accept vendor swag but I don’t think less of my librarian compatriots that do.  I don’t think that Wexis are evil, nor do I think that there’s anything wrong with running a for-profit business. I do wonder why we rely on commercial vendors for information that tax dollars have already paid for and how much profit is “enough” when libraries and law firms are facing massive budget cuts.

As I tell my Legal Research students, I think of Lexis and Westlaw as the Crips and Bloods of Legal Information.  They’re in it to make money.  And, like drug dealers, they’ll give you the first taste for free while you’re in law school in hopes that you get hooked.  But they’re also engaged in a to-the-death battle with each other over the finite customer base and if any one was clearly better than the other, the other would cease to exist. (And if you think I’m mistaken about the battle part, how many people got sent the West ad by their Lexis rep? )  So, basically, keep your eyes open and try to not be a casualty in the war…look out for yourself.

There’s always going to be tensions between librarians and vendors, especially as they expect people to pay for things that we want to give away for free. (There’s another analogy here that I keep coming back to, but there are some things that even I won’t put in print.)  Here’s the thing…they’re not on our side, they’re not our enemies…we’re all just pieces of the same puzzle.  And as soon as we get rid of worrying about being offended by them or always having to play defense or expecting them to kiss our rings for allowing them access to our patrons, we can start thinking about the future.  I really like the ideas that Meg and Tom put out earlier in the week about the West ad issue.   There are some concrete steps that law librarians, as individuals, can take and things to think about with regards to vendors and the role of librarians.

For better or worse, AALL is currently the major unified voice for law librarians.  If you’re unhappy with the vendor/librarian relationship, perhaps  AALL can be used as a conduit.

(Okay, Gentle Reader, I’m sure bitter laughter just rang out amongst some of you.  I know lots of people that I respect and like have major issues with AALL.  Personally, they haven’t really done me dirty yet, so I’m trying to keep an open mind.  I’ll try to work for change within the system, and if that fails, I’ll go outside of it.  I have no problem with going outside of the system and being a lone wolf and in many ways it’s easier, but maybe not as effective or fast.  Like I said, right now AALL has the body count of law librarians that makes it the best bet to effect change.  Refusing West’s funding for the Annual Meeting becaues they wouldn’t give up pricing information was a great start.  So I’m hopeful, but in the meantime I’ll also keep paying my dues to SLA and the Legal and Academic Divisions.  BUT I DIGRESS…)

Perhaps not coincidentally, in the middle of the West brou-ha-ha on Law-Lib, there was a brief message about AALL beginning the process of revising and planning for new stratgic directions for 2010-2013 since the current 2005-2010 strategic directions expire next year.  They’ve set up a blog for AALL membership to add its comments.  There are three questions that are asked:

1. How do we seize the moment and make it our own?
2. Where do we, as law librarians, want to be in the next three years?
3. What is required of us to create the world we envision?

Okay, those are really broad questions.  And yes, generally “strategic directions” and “mission statements” and things of that sort are often just “feel good” messages that aren’t easily transitioned into action and otherwise set off my BS meter.  But maybe they don’t need to be.  Respond to this call for input.  Add concrete ideas.   I need to think more before I figure out exactly how I want to answer these questions.  When I do figure out what I want to say, I’ll definitely post my answer here and there.  I encourage you to do the same.