LaTisha La Rue is our EBSCO rep as well. She is excellent and has saved us many hours of hassle and frustration from billing to fulfillment. One publisher refused to deal with her directly about fulfillment for a title we paid for through EBSCO, insisting that we had to contact them. I quickly fired off an email to correct their misconception about our vendor’s role and permission act on our behalf. I’m also able to ignore the endless print and email renewal solicitations because I have a high degree of confidence in our vendor. We use electronic invoicing. Entering in payments line-by-line for our subscriptions would be a big time commitment—even with fewer than 500 subscriptions.

 

I’ve dealt with situations with less-than-helpful vendors services. An open and direct discussion with them about our specific needs and expectations corrected those issues, more often than not. A good vendor will be responsive to any reasonable request. An unresponsive vendor is worth dropping.

 

 

 

We have EBSCO as subscription agent and LaTisha La Rue is our fantastic customer service rep at the LA center. We get wonderful service from them. We have about 570 subscriptions through EBSCO and what a pain it would be to have to renew each one separately! Whenever something odd comes up, 99% of the time EBSCONET is correct and if there are any problems, it’s usually on our end.

 

We have a handful of titles I have to subscribe direct for and I really dislike those. Who enjoys struggling through various websites, trying to find mailing labels, and reconciling the purchasing card statements?

 

Referring to the earlier delayed publication thread, I think that’s a difficulty brought about by publishers, and not the subscription agent’s fault.

 

Diane Westerfield, Electronic Resources & Serials Librarian

Tutt Library, Colorado College

diane.westerfield@coloradocollege.edu

(719) 389-6661

(719) 389-6082 (fax)

 

 

 

 

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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