- Email: [email protected]
Approval vendor selection—what’s best practice?
Pergamon
Library Acquisitions: Practice & Theory, Vol. 22, No. 3, pp. 341–351, 1998 Copyright © 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in the USA. All rights reserved 0364-6408/98 $19.00 1 .00
PII S0364-6408(98)00055-6
1997 ACADEMIC LIBRARY ASSOCIATION OF OHIO ANNUAL CONFERENCE
APPROVAL VENDOR SELECTION—WHAT’S BEST PRACTICE?1 LINDA A. BROWN Collection Development Coordinator Bowling Green University Libraries Bowling Green, Ohio 43403 Internet: [email protected]
Abstract—With the wide variety of vendor services available, discount or other traditional factors may no longer play a predominant role in determining an academic library’s vendor selection. A questionnaire was sent to 291 academic librarians to survey their vendor selection criteria and methods. Using preliminary results from the survey, this paper examines the mix of vendors’ traditional services vs. new services that now enter into the selection decision. Further, it considers differences in practice based upon library budget size. These initial results indicate that the traditional areas of corporate reputation, approval plan management, and acquisitions services consistently receive the highest ratings of importance. The areas covering outsourcing and electronic data transmission are rated higher by those libraries using these services. As more libraries seek these services from their approval vendors, the services will likely increase in importance in librarians’ decision-making processes. © 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd Keywords—Approval plans, Vendor selection, Academic libraries, Acquisitions, Survey results
INTRODUCTION Since the 1960s, approval plans have become an accepted method of book purchasing for many academic libraries. Selection of an approval vendor is a crucial and time-consuming decision for 1
NOTE: The papers by Linda A. Brown, John H. Forsyth, and Eric J. Carpenter were presented as parts of a panel “Managing the Moving Target: Librarian-Approval Vendor Collaboration in the Context of Erratic Budgets” at the 23rd Annual Conference of the Academic Library Association of Ohio on October 31, 1997. Brown’s paper is a revision of the ALAO presentation and was presented at the 17th Annual Charleston Conference, November 8, 1997.
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any library. John Hay, the 19th century journalist and diplomat, wrote, “Choose whom you may, you will find you have got somebody else.” [1] Librarians are faced with choices, sometimes at a rapid-fire pace in our fast-changing environment. At one time, a library’s approval vendor selection might have included considerations of discount, publisher base, and approval services. However, as librarians seek greater efficiencies in technical services, many now look to approval vendors to extend additional services to libraries. These services may include electronic data transactions, catalog records, and shelf-ready processing services. The approval vendor can become a technical services provider in addition to its traditional role as bookseller. We have a body of literature on vendor selection with good advice on procedures and methods that have been tried at one library or another. Gary Rossi’s annotated bibliography on approval plans does an excellent job of covering the literature up to 1986 [2]. Reidelbach and Shirk’s three-part article on selecting an approval plan vendor was published from 1983 to 1985 [3–5]. Though somewhat dated, it still provides guidance for approval vendor selection. Kay Womack and her colleagues’ 1988 article described the approval vendor review process undertaken at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln [6]. Dana Alessi gave us a vendor’s view of what to look for when selecting a vendor [7]. Frances Wilkinson and Connie Thorson detailed a clear rationale and methodology for using the RFP process for vendor selection [8]. Most recently, Susan Flood compiled an ARL SPEC Kit on approval plans [9]. What are the best practices for vendor selection? How can we not only learn from our mistakes, but also learn without making mistakes in the first place? How can we make sure that when we choose a vendor, we get the vendor of choice and the service of choice—not somebody else?
MATERIALS AND METHODS In an effort to learn what criteria and methods are used for vendor selection and how they have changed in recent years, John Forsyth, Business Bibliographer at Bowling Green State University, and I surveyed 291 academic acquisitions and collection development librarians. Our first step was to build a list of U.S. libraries that use approval plan(s) to purchase domestic imprint monographs across all disciplines. We contacted five major North American vendors—Academic Book Center, Baker & Taylor, Blackwell North America, Coutts, and Yankee Book Peddler. We requested that each vendor send us a list of its academic approval customers with comprehensive plans—those with approval plans across most disciplines; with broad subject plans, for example, a science plan; those with publisher-based plans—a university press plan, for example. All five vendors responded with lists of customers and contact names for approval plan managers. We then augmented this list with a number of doctoral-granting universities drawn from American Universities and Colleges [10]. Thus, the final list of 291 academic libraries was identified for our survey. Based upon the literature on approval vendor selection, our own experience, and experience of other colleagues, we drafted and tested a survey questionnaire. The questionnaire was tested by 10 librarians involved with collection development or acquisitions from academic libraries across the country and six librarians at Bowling Green State University. Final revisions in the questionnaire were made based upon the feedback from these individuals. Questionnaires were mailed to the 291 librarians identified through the method described above. Only one survey was sent to each institution. The first mailing was sent in July, 1997, with a response requested within three weeks. Initial responses included 95 useable questionnaires. One week before the deadline, we sent reminders to those from whom we had not yet received a response. One week after the deadline, we sent a second questionnaire mailing to 196 individuals who had not yet responded. This second
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TABLE 1 Approval Vendor Selection Categories Overall Rating—Ranked by Mean
Approval plan management expertise Acquisitions services Corporate reputation and business practices Electronic financial transactions Outsourcing: Cataloging Outsourcing: Physical processing
Mean
Median
4.308 4.062 3.945 3.469 2.882 2.671
4 4 4 4 3 3
mailing yielded 60 responses for a total of 155 responses, or 53% of the original 291. Of these, 146 surveys were useable, or 50%. The questionnaire included 79 criteria, arranged in six categories, to be rated for importance in vendor selection decisions. The six categories included: ● ● ● ● ● ●
Corporate reputation and business practices Approval plan management expertise Acquisitions services Outsourcing: Physical processing Outsourcing: Cataloging Electronic financial transactions
Each of the 79 criteria for vendor selection was assigned to one of the six categories. Respondents were asked to rate each criterion from 1 to 5 for its importance to the approval vendor decision [11]. When rating criteria, respondents were asked to recall the last time they were involved in a vendor selection decision, or to document past practice. Had we worded the question differently, the results might have differed. In addition to rating individual criteria, respondents were asked to provide an overall rating for each of the six categories. The survey data were processed and analyzed using the SAS program with the assistance of staff at Bowling Green State University’s Statistical Consulting Center [12].
DISCUSSION—SURVEY RESULTS Ranking of Selection Criteria Overall, Approval plan management expertise, Acquisitions services and Corporate reputation and business practices were the three highest ranked categories, followed by Electronic financial transactions, Outsourcing: Cataloging, and Outsourcing: Physical processing (Table 1). These rankings confirm that the traditional areas of approval plan management, acquisitions, and corporate reputation are still influential factors in libraries’ decision-making processes. The medians for each overall category rating in Table 1 indicate that the categories with lower means (Outsourcing and Electronic financial transactions) each had a higher frequency of 4 or 5 ratings rather than 1s or 2s.
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TABLE 2 Top Twenty Selection Criteria—Ranked by Mean Criterion 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.
Capability of profile to identify books needed Quality of customer service Vendor’s adaptability to library needs Responsiveness of customer service Accuracy and clarity of invoices Prompt delivery of books after publication Capability of vendor to minimize duplication among approval selections, standing orders, and firm orders Importance of publishers available for the approval plan Vendor’s responsiveness to approval profile change requests Physical condition of books received Vendor provides notification slips for books published but not shipped on approval Vendor’s profiling method and techniques Effectiveness of vendor’s quality-control mechanisms Number of publishers covered for the approval plan Vendor’s return policy Vendor’s financial health Vendor’s reputation Rate of discount Regular shipping schedule Ability of vendor’s account structure to accommodate local library needs
Mean
Median
4.616 4.452 4.448 4.438 4.428 4.414 4.379
5 4 5 4 4 4 5
4.356
4
4.347
4
4.315 4.269
4 4
4.240 4.234 4.205 4.192 4.133 4.082 4.055 4.048 4.021
4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4
The 79 individual criteria were ranked without regard to category. Table 2 lists the 20 top-ranked criteria. These are in one of the three top-ranked categories—Approval plan management expertise, Acquisitions services, or Corporate reputation and business practices. Two of the Approval management criteria had a median rating of 5—meaning that they were critical to the selection decision—Capability of profile to identify books needed and Capability of vendor to minimize duplication among approval selections, standing orders, and firm orders. One Corporate reputation criterion also had a median rating of 5—Vendor’s adaptability to library needs. High medians for these three criteria indicate the high frequency of critical and very important ratings.
Responses by Type and Size of Library Budget To take a first look at differences among libraries, we examined ratings of the overall categories. Responses by total library materials budget, by monograph budget, and by approval budget were considered. Figure 1 examines responses by size of library materials budget. Nearly 80% of the total sample assigned high ratings to Corporate reputation. 90% of respondents in libraries with budgets of less than $1 million assigned 4 or 5 ratings to this category. Corporate reputation becomes less important as budget size increases. There is little difference in the frequency of high ratings for Approval plan management expertise or for Acquisitions services across libraries of
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Figure 1. Overall category ratings: Percentages of very important or critical ratings. Total library materials budget.
varying materials budget size. Looking at Outsourcing: Physical processing, approximately 45% of libraries with budgets of less than $1 million and those with budgets from $3,000,000 to $4,999,999 generally rate this category highly, as compared to about 35% of the total sample. The libraries with budgets of $1,000,000 to $2,999,999 gave the highest percentages of 4 & 5 ratings to the Outsourcing: Cataloging category. Approximately 75% of libraries with materials budgets from $1,000,000 to $2,999,999 and those with budget size from $3,000,000 to $4,999,999 assigned high ratings to the Electronic financial transactions category. There is a slight tendency for libraries of moderate size to highly rate the Outsourcing and Electronic transactions categories. The picture changes somewhat when we consider how ratings of the overall categories vary by size of monograph budget (Figure 2). The high percentage of 4 and 5 ratings for Approval management and Acquisitions is similar to what we saw when examining responses by total materials budget size. However, 50% of libraries with the largest monograph budgets— greater
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Figure 2. Overall category ratings: Percentages of very important or critical ratings. Monograph budget.
than $1,000,000 —rated the Outsourcing: Physical processing category as very important or critical. The tendency for libraries with moderate-sized materials budgets to rate the Outsourcing and Electronic transactions categories most highly is not continued when examining responses by size of monograph budget. An examination of responses by size of monograph budget may be more meaningful than responses by size of total materials budget. Size of total budget may not predict the size of monograph budget since serials or other formats may constitute a large percentage of the total budget. Figure 3 examines responses by size of approval budget. For Approval management and Acquisitions services, again, 80% to 90% of all libraries rate the category as 4 or 5. As with responses by monograph budget, greater percentages of larger budgeted libraries rated Outsourcing: Physical processing highly. For Outsourcing: Cataloging, only about 35% of libraries with approval budgets of $100,000 to $299,999 assigned high ratings to the category. With Electronic
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Figure 3. Overall category ratings: Percentages of very important or critical ratings. Approval budget.
transactions we again see a slight tendency for the libraries with moderate-sized budgets to rate the category highly. Approval management, Acquisitions, and Corporate reputation are the highest rated categories for libraries’ previous vendor selections. Further analysis of responses to the Outsourcing and Electronic transactions criteria will be needed to determine any consistency of trends by budget size.
Ratings of Outsourcing: Physical Processing, Outsourcing: Cataloging, and Electronic Financial Transactions Criteria Figure 4 compares the percentage of high ratings of the Outsourcing: Physical Processing, Outsourcing: Cataloging, and Electronic Financial Transactions categories between the total sample and those libraries currently using outsourcing or electronic transaction services. The percentage of very important or critical ratings for each category is considerably higher for those
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Figure 4. Overall category ratings: Percentages of very important or critical ratings. libraries currently using each service. Lower percentages of high ratings within the total sample are due to the number of libraries not using each service who rated the category as not important. In all categories, as the number of libraries using the service increases, so does the percentage of high ratings. We examined the differences in ratings of the individual criteria within each of the Outsourcing and Electronic transactions categories. For the Outsourcing: Physical processing category, the percentage of high ratings for many criteria was about 15 to 20 percentage points higher for libraries currently outsourcing physical processing than for the total sample. However, four criteria received markedly higher percentages of high ratings by those libraries outsourcing physical processing: ● ●
Qualifications of the vendor’s staff Size of the vendor staff devoted to processing services
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● ●
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Degree of customization available for the individual library Willingness of the vendor to accept the return of damaged shelf-ready materials
For Outsourcing: Cataloging, the percentage of high ratings assigned for most criteria differed by 10 to 20 points between the total sample and those libraries currently outsourcing cataloging. Four criteria were highly rated by a markedly higher percentage of librarians who are outsourcing cataloging than by the total sample: ● ● ● ●
Availability of full MARC or other standard record formats for purchase Ability of the vendor to electronically transfer MARC records to the local integrated library system Percentage of materials for which the vendor staff finds cataloging records Catalog record found is compared to the book in hand
For all Electronic transaction criteria, the percentage of high ratings between the two groups differed by only 14 to 19 percentage points. No individual criterion stood out as more important to users of the service than to the total sample.
Information Gathering Methods We also looked at methods of gathering information for an approval vendor selection. Respondents were asked to recall the last time they were involved in an approval vendor selection. Then they were asked to indicate the methods of information gathering they used for each information category, or past practice. Further, they were asked to consider a hypothetical vendor selection and to identify, for each category, the information-gathering methods that would produce the most significant information, or ideal practice. We identified the responses of 80 individuals who answered both of these sections and compared their responses for each method and category. There is quite a bit of consistency in the highest frequency responses across categories (see Table 3). Presentations at your library, Questions for written response, Request for proposal & bid, and Telephone references to librarian’s personal contacts were frequently selected in at least four of the six categories. Telephone references provided by the vendor was frequently selected in the Outsourcing: Physical processing and Corporate reputation categories. Data from vendor, e.g., publisher list, number of titles handled by class, etc. was frequently selected in the Approval management and Acquisitions categories. Table 4 lists the four methods for each category that librarians believe would produce the most significant information. The methods frequently selected are quite consistent with the methods most frequently used in the past. Telephone references to librarian’s personal contacts, Presentations at your library, Questions for written response, and Request for proposal & bid were frequently selected for most categories. The Vendor’s financial report is the one information gathering method that emerges in ideal practice that was not among the top choices for past practice. Lastly, we looked at those methods where the largest increases or largest decreases in frequency occurred when comparing past practice to ideal practice. Visit to vendor headquarters and the Vendor’s financial report received the highest percentage increase. Visit to vendor headquarters was not among the most frequently selected methods. It has not been heavily used in past practice, but a number of librarians recommended it as likely to produce significant information for every information category. Vendor’s financial report also increased in frequency for every category. Those methods that dropped in frequency were Vendor advertising & brochures and Conference
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TABLE 3 Information Gathering Methods—Past Practice Corporate reputation and business practices Telephone references—librarian’s personal contacts Presentations at your library Request for proposal & bid Telephone references—vendor provided Approval plan management expertise Presentations at your library Telephone references—librarian’s personal contacts Data from vendor, e.g., publisher list, no. of titles handled by class, etc. Questions for written response Acquisitions services Presentations at your library Data from vendor, e.g., publisher list, no. of titles handled by class, etc. Telephone references—librarian’s personal contacts Request for proposal & bid Outsourcing: Physical processing Presentations at your library Questions for written response Request for proposal & bid Telephone references—vendor provided Outsourcing: Cataloging Electronic financial transactions Presentations at your library Questions for written response Request for proposal & bid Telephone references—librarian’s personal contacts
exhibits. Though these may be initial information sources, they are seen by librarians as not necessarily producing the most significant information.
CONCLUSION This investigation has confirmed that many of the methods we currently use for approval vendor selection work well for the librarians who responded to this survey, but the importance of these selection criteria is changing. The categories of Approval management, Acquisitions, and Corporate reputation remain very important to vendor selection. However, as more libraries use outsourcing and electronic transaction services provided by vendors, the importance of these criteria will likely increase. What does this mean for your library’s next approval vendor selection? You still need to do your homework; know what you need and why you need it. Set your priorities; know what your deal-makers and deal-breakers are. Involve experts from all areas of your library’s staff. Analyze and evaluate the data you gather from each vendor and verify this through other sources—your own contacts, vendor-supplied references, visits to finalist vendors’ headquarters, and vendor financial reports. Once you have selected your vendor, communicate and collaborate with that vendor so that your needs can be met. You need to ensure that you get the vendor you select—not somebody else.
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TABLE 4 Information Gathering Methods That Produce the Most Significant Information Corporate reputation and business practices Telephone references—librarian’s personal contacts Vendor’s financial report Presentations at your library Telephone references—vendor provided Approval plan management expertise Presentations at your library Telephone references—librarian’s personal contacts Data from vendor, e.g. publisher list, no. of titles handled by class, etc. Questions for written response Acquisitions services Outsourcing: Physical processing Outsourcing: Cataloging Electronic financial transactions Telephone references—librarian’s personal contacts Presentations at your library Questions for written response Request for proposal & bid
REFERENCES 1. Hay, John. “Distichs X,” Poems. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1892. 2. Rossi, Gary J. “Library Approval Plans: A Selected, Annotated Bibliography,” Library Acquisitions: Practice & Theory, 11 (1987), 3–34. 3. Reidelbach, John H., and Shirk, Gary M. “Selecting an Approval Plan Vendor: A Step-by-Step Process,” Library Acquisitions: Practice & Theory, 7 (1983), 115–122. 4. Reidelbach, John H., and Shirk, Gary M. “Selecting an Approval Plan Vendor II: Comparative Vendor Data,” Library Acquisitions: Practice & Theory, 8 (1984), 157–202. 5. Reidelbach, John H., and Shirk, Gary M. “Selecting an Approval Plan Vendor III: Academic Librarians’ Evaluations of Eight United States Approval Plan Vendors,” Library Acquisitions: Practice & Theory, 9 (1985), 177–260. 6. Womack, Kay, Adams, Agnes, Johnson, Judy L., and Walter, Katherine L. “An Approval Plan Vendor Review: The Organization and Process,” Library Acquisitions: Practice & Theory, 12 (1988), 363–378. 7. Alessi, Dana. “Vendor Selection, Vendor Collection, or Vendor Defection,” Journal of Library Administration, 16 (1992), 117–130. 8. Wilkinson, Frances C., and Thorson, Connie Capers. “The RFP Process: Rational, Educational, Necessary or There Ain’t No Such Thing as a Free Lunch,” Library Acquisitions: Practice & Theory, 19 (1995), 251–268. 9. Flood, Susan, compiler. Evolution & Status of Approval Plans, SPEC Kit, 221, Washington, D.C.: Association of Research Libraries, 1997. 10. American Council on Education. “Earned Doctorates (and Intermediate Degrees) in Regionally Accredited American Universities and Colleges, 1975– 89, by Institution and Year.” American Universities and Colleges, 14th edition. New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1992, pp. 1886 –1893. 11. 1 5 Not important; 2 5 Slightly important; 3 5 Somewhat important; 4 5 Very important; 5 5 Critical. 12. The author would like to acknowledge Bowling Green State University’s Dean of Libraries and Learning Resources, Linda S. Dobb, for support of this research project and Nancy Boudreau, Associate Professor of Applied Statistics and Operations Research and the staff of the Statistical Consulting Center, for assistance with the data analysis.
Library Acquisitions: Practice & Theory, Vol. 22, No. 3, pp. 341–351, 1998 Copyright © 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in the USA. All rights reserved 0364-6408/98 $19.00 1 .00
PII S0364-6408(98)00055-6
1997 ACADEMIC LIBRARY ASSOCIATION OF OHIO ANNUAL CONFERENCE
APPROVAL VENDOR SELECTION—WHAT’S BEST PRACTICE?1 LINDA A. BROWN Collection Development Coordinator Bowling Green University Libraries Bowling Green, Ohio 43403 Internet: [email protected]
Abstract—With the wide variety of vendor services available, discount or other traditional factors may no longer play a predominant role in determining an academic library’s vendor selection. A questionnaire was sent to 291 academic librarians to survey their vendor selection criteria and methods. Using preliminary results from the survey, this paper examines the mix of vendors’ traditional services vs. new services that now enter into the selection decision. Further, it considers differences in practice based upon library budget size. These initial results indicate that the traditional areas of corporate reputation, approval plan management, and acquisitions services consistently receive the highest ratings of importance. The areas covering outsourcing and electronic data transmission are rated higher by those libraries using these services. As more libraries seek these services from their approval vendors, the services will likely increase in importance in librarians’ decision-making processes. © 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd Keywords—Approval plans, Vendor selection, Academic libraries, Acquisitions, Survey results
INTRODUCTION Since the 1960s, approval plans have become an accepted method of book purchasing for many academic libraries. Selection of an approval vendor is a crucial and time-consuming decision for 1
NOTE: The papers by Linda A. Brown, John H. Forsyth, and Eric J. Carpenter were presented as parts of a panel “Managing the Moving Target: Librarian-Approval Vendor Collaboration in the Context of Erratic Budgets” at the 23rd Annual Conference of the Academic Library Association of Ohio on October 31, 1997. Brown’s paper is a revision of the ALAO presentation and was presented at the 17th Annual Charleston Conference, November 8, 1997.
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any library. John Hay, the 19th century journalist and diplomat, wrote, “Choose whom you may, you will find you have got somebody else.” [1] Librarians are faced with choices, sometimes at a rapid-fire pace in our fast-changing environment. At one time, a library’s approval vendor selection might have included considerations of discount, publisher base, and approval services. However, as librarians seek greater efficiencies in technical services, many now look to approval vendors to extend additional services to libraries. These services may include electronic data transactions, catalog records, and shelf-ready processing services. The approval vendor can become a technical services provider in addition to its traditional role as bookseller. We have a body of literature on vendor selection with good advice on procedures and methods that have been tried at one library or another. Gary Rossi’s annotated bibliography on approval plans does an excellent job of covering the literature up to 1986 [2]. Reidelbach and Shirk’s three-part article on selecting an approval plan vendor was published from 1983 to 1985 [3–5]. Though somewhat dated, it still provides guidance for approval vendor selection. Kay Womack and her colleagues’ 1988 article described the approval vendor review process undertaken at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln [6]. Dana Alessi gave us a vendor’s view of what to look for when selecting a vendor [7]. Frances Wilkinson and Connie Thorson detailed a clear rationale and methodology for using the RFP process for vendor selection [8]. Most recently, Susan Flood compiled an ARL SPEC Kit on approval plans [9]. What are the best practices for vendor selection? How can we not only learn from our mistakes, but also learn without making mistakes in the first place? How can we make sure that when we choose a vendor, we get the vendor of choice and the service of choice—not somebody else?
MATERIALS AND METHODS In an effort to learn what criteria and methods are used for vendor selection and how they have changed in recent years, John Forsyth, Business Bibliographer at Bowling Green State University, and I surveyed 291 academic acquisitions and collection development librarians. Our first step was to build a list of U.S. libraries that use approval plan(s) to purchase domestic imprint monographs across all disciplines. We contacted five major North American vendors—Academic Book Center, Baker & Taylor, Blackwell North America, Coutts, and Yankee Book Peddler. We requested that each vendor send us a list of its academic approval customers with comprehensive plans—those with approval plans across most disciplines; with broad subject plans, for example, a science plan; those with publisher-based plans—a university press plan, for example. All five vendors responded with lists of customers and contact names for approval plan managers. We then augmented this list with a number of doctoral-granting universities drawn from American Universities and Colleges [10]. Thus, the final list of 291 academic libraries was identified for our survey. Based upon the literature on approval vendor selection, our own experience, and experience of other colleagues, we drafted and tested a survey questionnaire. The questionnaire was tested by 10 librarians involved with collection development or acquisitions from academic libraries across the country and six librarians at Bowling Green State University. Final revisions in the questionnaire were made based upon the feedback from these individuals. Questionnaires were mailed to the 291 librarians identified through the method described above. Only one survey was sent to each institution. The first mailing was sent in July, 1997, with a response requested within three weeks. Initial responses included 95 useable questionnaires. One week before the deadline, we sent reminders to those from whom we had not yet received a response. One week after the deadline, we sent a second questionnaire mailing to 196 individuals who had not yet responded. This second
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TABLE 1 Approval Vendor Selection Categories Overall Rating—Ranked by Mean
Approval plan management expertise Acquisitions services Corporate reputation and business practices Electronic financial transactions Outsourcing: Cataloging Outsourcing: Physical processing
Mean
Median
4.308 4.062 3.945 3.469 2.882 2.671
4 4 4 4 3 3
mailing yielded 60 responses for a total of 155 responses, or 53% of the original 291. Of these, 146 surveys were useable, or 50%. The questionnaire included 79 criteria, arranged in six categories, to be rated for importance in vendor selection decisions. The six categories included: ● ● ● ● ● ●
Corporate reputation and business practices Approval plan management expertise Acquisitions services Outsourcing: Physical processing Outsourcing: Cataloging Electronic financial transactions
Each of the 79 criteria for vendor selection was assigned to one of the six categories. Respondents were asked to rate each criterion from 1 to 5 for its importance to the approval vendor decision [11]. When rating criteria, respondents were asked to recall the last time they were involved in a vendor selection decision, or to document past practice. Had we worded the question differently, the results might have differed. In addition to rating individual criteria, respondents were asked to provide an overall rating for each of the six categories. The survey data were processed and analyzed using the SAS program with the assistance of staff at Bowling Green State University’s Statistical Consulting Center [12].
DISCUSSION—SURVEY RESULTS Ranking of Selection Criteria Overall, Approval plan management expertise, Acquisitions services and Corporate reputation and business practices were the three highest ranked categories, followed by Electronic financial transactions, Outsourcing: Cataloging, and Outsourcing: Physical processing (Table 1). These rankings confirm that the traditional areas of approval plan management, acquisitions, and corporate reputation are still influential factors in libraries’ decision-making processes. The medians for each overall category rating in Table 1 indicate that the categories with lower means (Outsourcing and Electronic financial transactions) each had a higher frequency of 4 or 5 ratings rather than 1s or 2s.
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TABLE 2 Top Twenty Selection Criteria—Ranked by Mean Criterion 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.
Capability of profile to identify books needed Quality of customer service Vendor’s adaptability to library needs Responsiveness of customer service Accuracy and clarity of invoices Prompt delivery of books after publication Capability of vendor to minimize duplication among approval selections, standing orders, and firm orders Importance of publishers available for the approval plan Vendor’s responsiveness to approval profile change requests Physical condition of books received Vendor provides notification slips for books published but not shipped on approval Vendor’s profiling method and techniques Effectiveness of vendor’s quality-control mechanisms Number of publishers covered for the approval plan Vendor’s return policy Vendor’s financial health Vendor’s reputation Rate of discount Regular shipping schedule Ability of vendor’s account structure to accommodate local library needs
Mean
Median
4.616 4.452 4.448 4.438 4.428 4.414 4.379
5 4 5 4 4 4 5
4.356
4
4.347
4
4.315 4.269
4 4
4.240 4.234 4.205 4.192 4.133 4.082 4.055 4.048 4.021
4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4
The 79 individual criteria were ranked without regard to category. Table 2 lists the 20 top-ranked criteria. These are in one of the three top-ranked categories—Approval plan management expertise, Acquisitions services, or Corporate reputation and business practices. Two of the Approval management criteria had a median rating of 5—meaning that they were critical to the selection decision—Capability of profile to identify books needed and Capability of vendor to minimize duplication among approval selections, standing orders, and firm orders. One Corporate reputation criterion also had a median rating of 5—Vendor’s adaptability to library needs. High medians for these three criteria indicate the high frequency of critical and very important ratings.
Responses by Type and Size of Library Budget To take a first look at differences among libraries, we examined ratings of the overall categories. Responses by total library materials budget, by monograph budget, and by approval budget were considered. Figure 1 examines responses by size of library materials budget. Nearly 80% of the total sample assigned high ratings to Corporate reputation. 90% of respondents in libraries with budgets of less than $1 million assigned 4 or 5 ratings to this category. Corporate reputation becomes less important as budget size increases. There is little difference in the frequency of high ratings for Approval plan management expertise or for Acquisitions services across libraries of
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Figure 1. Overall category ratings: Percentages of very important or critical ratings. Total library materials budget.
varying materials budget size. Looking at Outsourcing: Physical processing, approximately 45% of libraries with budgets of less than $1 million and those with budgets from $3,000,000 to $4,999,999 generally rate this category highly, as compared to about 35% of the total sample. The libraries with budgets of $1,000,000 to $2,999,999 gave the highest percentages of 4 & 5 ratings to the Outsourcing: Cataloging category. Approximately 75% of libraries with materials budgets from $1,000,000 to $2,999,999 and those with budget size from $3,000,000 to $4,999,999 assigned high ratings to the Electronic financial transactions category. There is a slight tendency for libraries of moderate size to highly rate the Outsourcing and Electronic transactions categories. The picture changes somewhat when we consider how ratings of the overall categories vary by size of monograph budget (Figure 2). The high percentage of 4 and 5 ratings for Approval management and Acquisitions is similar to what we saw when examining responses by total materials budget size. However, 50% of libraries with the largest monograph budgets— greater
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Figure 2. Overall category ratings: Percentages of very important or critical ratings. Monograph budget.
than $1,000,000 —rated the Outsourcing: Physical processing category as very important or critical. The tendency for libraries with moderate-sized materials budgets to rate the Outsourcing and Electronic transactions categories most highly is not continued when examining responses by size of monograph budget. An examination of responses by size of monograph budget may be more meaningful than responses by size of total materials budget. Size of total budget may not predict the size of monograph budget since serials or other formats may constitute a large percentage of the total budget. Figure 3 examines responses by size of approval budget. For Approval management and Acquisitions services, again, 80% to 90% of all libraries rate the category as 4 or 5. As with responses by monograph budget, greater percentages of larger budgeted libraries rated Outsourcing: Physical processing highly. For Outsourcing: Cataloging, only about 35% of libraries with approval budgets of $100,000 to $299,999 assigned high ratings to the category. With Electronic
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Figure 3. Overall category ratings: Percentages of very important or critical ratings. Approval budget.
transactions we again see a slight tendency for the libraries with moderate-sized budgets to rate the category highly. Approval management, Acquisitions, and Corporate reputation are the highest rated categories for libraries’ previous vendor selections. Further analysis of responses to the Outsourcing and Electronic transactions criteria will be needed to determine any consistency of trends by budget size.
Ratings of Outsourcing: Physical Processing, Outsourcing: Cataloging, and Electronic Financial Transactions Criteria Figure 4 compares the percentage of high ratings of the Outsourcing: Physical Processing, Outsourcing: Cataloging, and Electronic Financial Transactions categories between the total sample and those libraries currently using outsourcing or electronic transaction services. The percentage of very important or critical ratings for each category is considerably higher for those
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Figure 4. Overall category ratings: Percentages of very important or critical ratings. libraries currently using each service. Lower percentages of high ratings within the total sample are due to the number of libraries not using each service who rated the category as not important. In all categories, as the number of libraries using the service increases, so does the percentage of high ratings. We examined the differences in ratings of the individual criteria within each of the Outsourcing and Electronic transactions categories. For the Outsourcing: Physical processing category, the percentage of high ratings for many criteria was about 15 to 20 percentage points higher for libraries currently outsourcing physical processing than for the total sample. However, four criteria received markedly higher percentages of high ratings by those libraries outsourcing physical processing: ● ●
Qualifications of the vendor’s staff Size of the vendor staff devoted to processing services
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Degree of customization available for the individual library Willingness of the vendor to accept the return of damaged shelf-ready materials
For Outsourcing: Cataloging, the percentage of high ratings assigned for most criteria differed by 10 to 20 points between the total sample and those libraries currently outsourcing cataloging. Four criteria were highly rated by a markedly higher percentage of librarians who are outsourcing cataloging than by the total sample: ● ● ● ●
Availability of full MARC or other standard record formats for purchase Ability of the vendor to electronically transfer MARC records to the local integrated library system Percentage of materials for which the vendor staff finds cataloging records Catalog record found is compared to the book in hand
For all Electronic transaction criteria, the percentage of high ratings between the two groups differed by only 14 to 19 percentage points. No individual criterion stood out as more important to users of the service than to the total sample.
Information Gathering Methods We also looked at methods of gathering information for an approval vendor selection. Respondents were asked to recall the last time they were involved in an approval vendor selection. Then they were asked to indicate the methods of information gathering they used for each information category, or past practice. Further, they were asked to consider a hypothetical vendor selection and to identify, for each category, the information-gathering methods that would produce the most significant information, or ideal practice. We identified the responses of 80 individuals who answered both of these sections and compared their responses for each method and category. There is quite a bit of consistency in the highest frequency responses across categories (see Table 3). Presentations at your library, Questions for written response, Request for proposal & bid, and Telephone references to librarian’s personal contacts were frequently selected in at least four of the six categories. Telephone references provided by the vendor was frequently selected in the Outsourcing: Physical processing and Corporate reputation categories. Data from vendor, e.g., publisher list, number of titles handled by class, etc. was frequently selected in the Approval management and Acquisitions categories. Table 4 lists the four methods for each category that librarians believe would produce the most significant information. The methods frequently selected are quite consistent with the methods most frequently used in the past. Telephone references to librarian’s personal contacts, Presentations at your library, Questions for written response, and Request for proposal & bid were frequently selected for most categories. The Vendor’s financial report is the one information gathering method that emerges in ideal practice that was not among the top choices for past practice. Lastly, we looked at those methods where the largest increases or largest decreases in frequency occurred when comparing past practice to ideal practice. Visit to vendor headquarters and the Vendor’s financial report received the highest percentage increase. Visit to vendor headquarters was not among the most frequently selected methods. It has not been heavily used in past practice, but a number of librarians recommended it as likely to produce significant information for every information category. Vendor’s financial report also increased in frequency for every category. Those methods that dropped in frequency were Vendor advertising & brochures and Conference
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TABLE 3 Information Gathering Methods—Past Practice Corporate reputation and business practices Telephone references—librarian’s personal contacts Presentations at your library Request for proposal & bid Telephone references—vendor provided Approval plan management expertise Presentations at your library Telephone references—librarian’s personal contacts Data from vendor, e.g., publisher list, no. of titles handled by class, etc. Questions for written response Acquisitions services Presentations at your library Data from vendor, e.g., publisher list, no. of titles handled by class, etc. Telephone references—librarian’s personal contacts Request for proposal & bid Outsourcing: Physical processing Presentations at your library Questions for written response Request for proposal & bid Telephone references—vendor provided Outsourcing: Cataloging Electronic financial transactions Presentations at your library Questions for written response Request for proposal & bid Telephone references—librarian’s personal contacts
exhibits. Though these may be initial information sources, they are seen by librarians as not necessarily producing the most significant information.
CONCLUSION This investigation has confirmed that many of the methods we currently use for approval vendor selection work well for the librarians who responded to this survey, but the importance of these selection criteria is changing. The categories of Approval management, Acquisitions, and Corporate reputation remain very important to vendor selection. However, as more libraries use outsourcing and electronic transaction services provided by vendors, the importance of these criteria will likely increase. What does this mean for your library’s next approval vendor selection? You still need to do your homework; know what you need and why you need it. Set your priorities; know what your deal-makers and deal-breakers are. Involve experts from all areas of your library’s staff. Analyze and evaluate the data you gather from each vendor and verify this through other sources—your own contacts, vendor-supplied references, visits to finalist vendors’ headquarters, and vendor financial reports. Once you have selected your vendor, communicate and collaborate with that vendor so that your needs can be met. You need to ensure that you get the vendor you select—not somebody else.
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TABLE 4 Information Gathering Methods That Produce the Most Significant Information Corporate reputation and business practices Telephone references—librarian’s personal contacts Vendor’s financial report Presentations at your library Telephone references—vendor provided Approval plan management expertise Presentations at your library Telephone references—librarian’s personal contacts Data from vendor, e.g. publisher list, no. of titles handled by class, etc. Questions for written response Acquisitions services Outsourcing: Physical processing Outsourcing: Cataloging Electronic financial transactions Telephone references—librarian’s personal contacts Presentations at your library Questions for written response Request for proposal & bid
REFERENCES 1. Hay, John. “Distichs X,” Poems. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1892. 2. Rossi, Gary J. “Library Approval Plans: A Selected, Annotated Bibliography,” Library Acquisitions: Practice & Theory, 11 (1987), 3–34. 3. Reidelbach, John H., and Shirk, Gary M. “Selecting an Approval Plan Vendor: A Step-by-Step Process,” Library Acquisitions: Practice & Theory, 7 (1983), 115–122. 4. Reidelbach, John H., and Shirk, Gary M. “Selecting an Approval Plan Vendor II: Comparative Vendor Data,” Library Acquisitions: Practice & Theory, 8 (1984), 157–202. 5. Reidelbach, John H., and Shirk, Gary M. “Selecting an Approval Plan Vendor III: Academic Librarians’ Evaluations of Eight United States Approval Plan Vendors,” Library Acquisitions: Practice & Theory, 9 (1985), 177–260. 6. Womack, Kay, Adams, Agnes, Johnson, Judy L., and Walter, Katherine L. “An Approval Plan Vendor Review: The Organization and Process,” Library Acquisitions: Practice & Theory, 12 (1988), 363–378. 7. Alessi, Dana. “Vendor Selection, Vendor Collection, or Vendor Defection,” Journal of Library Administration, 16 (1992), 117–130. 8. Wilkinson, Frances C., and Thorson, Connie Capers. “The RFP Process: Rational, Educational, Necessary or There Ain’t No Such Thing as a Free Lunch,” Library Acquisitions: Practice & Theory, 19 (1995), 251–268. 9. Flood, Susan, compiler. Evolution & Status of Approval Plans, SPEC Kit, 221, Washington, D.C.: Association of Research Libraries, 1997. 10. American Council on Education. “Earned Doctorates (and Intermediate Degrees) in Regionally Accredited American Universities and Colleges, 1975– 89, by Institution and Year.” American Universities and Colleges, 14th edition. New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1992, pp. 1886 –1893. 11. 1 5 Not important; 2 5 Slightly important; 3 5 Somewhat important; 4 5 Very important; 5 5 Critical. 12. The author would like to acknowledge Bowling Green State University’s Dean of Libraries and Learning Resources, Linda S. Dobb, for support of this research project and Nancy Boudreau, Associate Professor of Applied Statistics and Operations Research and the staff of the Statistical Consulting Center, for assistance with the data analysis.