Welcome to the Buyer’s Guide
Directory 2020 Available in print and online
Holistic approach to buying and its role
POWER politics around purchasing expose some interesting challenges for the information profession in libraries and beyond. While some librarians and info pros are struggling to be included in the buying processes of their employers others are seeking new working relationships with suppliers to tackle ongoing issues.
In CILIP’s Buyers’ Guide 2020 we hear from buyers and consultants from within Higher Education, public libraries and the private sector.
After 21 years at Imperial College, Gavin Phillips reflects on his new role at the Southern Universities Purchasing Consortium highlighting the value of innovative relationships with suppliers while acknowledging that most buyers don’t have time and how suppliers might help. He also explores the possibility of more subtle tendering processes for consortia to tackle deep-rooted problems in the supply chain, particularly over bad metadata.
Dion Lindsay and Stephen Phillips discuss what appears to be a systemic problem facing many information professionals in the private sector – a monolithic IT system that discourages buying outside the IT infrastructure, which includes most cutting edge KIM products. Dion and Stephen argue that suppliers have a role in breaking this deadlock, and that employers will benefit.
This doesn’t seem to be a problem for Paul Howarth, Head of Content & Product Development at Suffolk Libraries who says Suffolk was the first UK library service to offer music streaming and downloads and the second public library to provide film streaming through the Kanopy platform. However he explains that Suffolk has taken back control of buying from the suppliers and why the basic evidence base won’t always be helpful in a fast changing world : “while there is clear need to understand past performance and current trends, there is a risk here of perpetuating patterns of decline” he says, adding that the focus of innovation is on library services rather than library content – and that doing one without the other won’t work.
And David Lindley, Executive Director, Designing Libraries, examines how access to content and spaces has been revolutionised by digital technology. He examines how this has revolutionised the behaviour of users and the roles of librarians and looks at examples that are looking at “a much wider integration of library functions, staff roles, technology and user habits and expectations of what they can actually do in a library and how much control the user has over how that is done.”
Angela Krzyzanowska 5 BG layout 2020
spare3.indd 3 23/01/2020 19:59
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