Welcome to the Buyers’ Guide
Directory 2025 Available in print and online
Buyers buckle up for 2025
SHOULD libraries be held responsible if their users put paywalled content into AI? And what happens if the AI tools of a supplier, aggregator, or broker of another kind upset publishers, resulting in con- tent being pulled?
These are some of the problems buyers now have to consider when signing deals for content and collection management tools. They are just two of the headaches explored by Gavin Phillips from SUPC in a look at emerging challenges for library buyers – the biggest of which may turn out to be changes in tendering regulations that will affect all public services.
Librarians Paul Cavanagh and Lucy Veasey from Nottingham University explore why evaluating open access publishing is so complex. Transformative Agreements are the mechanisms being used to shift from readers paying to read to authors paying to publish. Even on the traditional ‘pay to read’ side of these deals, where data is available and relatively standardised, understanding value for money is complex and saps library resources.
But it pales before the complexity of ‘pay to publish’ where not only is there a lack of data and inconsistent methodology between publishers, there are also conceptual and cultural chasms between analysing and forecasting reader needs and analysing/forecasting author needs. Paul and Lucy offer some ideas on what might make it easier.
With libraries in all sectors facing funding crises, their relationships with vendors face prolonged stress tests. Lauren Purton, Marketing Executive at PTFS Europe, a CILIP Supplier Partner, explains how public libraries and software suppliers can optimise their relationships.
Offering actions for both librarians and vendors, she considers the ongoing expansion of the scope of services offered by libraries and how technology can help manage these, as well as core offerings.
From advising librarians on APIs – “enabling good interconnectivity with eBook providers, membership registry systems, interlending providers, the Public Lending Rights, internal organisation systems” to suggesting vendors work to support the development of communities among their clients, she explains how to keep relationships with vendors healthy and transparent and how this may save money.
We also explore how collection data can be used to create a proxy customer survey – one that informs librarians on how to manage their collections, provide actions on which books to buy, which books to keep and where to keep them. Jamie Wright from collectionHQ looks at some of the trends and challenges across both public and academic sectors and how evidence-based collection manage- ment can impact use of physical space and work forces as well as reader engagement.
The final piece in this issue looks at how pressures and challenges can also come from within institutions themselves. Liz Whale, Southampton Libraries, explains how this can work both ways – how the double whammy of library service coinbased printers reaching ‘end of life’ simultaneously with library purchasing being centralised could have gone either way… but led to new tech, increased income and new audiences.
Rob Mackinlay 5
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