Suppliers are looking for enhanced reach and impact by improving their sector profile in order to get better access to potential markets. CILIP’s package is designed to help vendors seeking more meaningful opportunities to engage with their audience, demonstrate thought leadership and position their products or services as solutions to real-world problems.
These opportunities are on offer to tra- ditional and new players in the market. Technology as well as consolidation in the market has resulted in big changes but it has been counteracted by a growth in new vendors with a specific focus on innovation and technology. We have an interview with the CEO of Keenious, Frode Opdahl who not only explains how the uses AI to find research relevant to any document, but also shares his experience of the start-up process, and the complexities of moving into new markets. In the piece he also explains how investors see the library sector, and the role that buyers in big institutions can play in helping start-ups.
Market movers
All our thousands of members’ work is impacted by procurement processes and so are their clients – whether that’s mem-
bers of the public, students, academics or other professionals. And an increasingly important aspect of the work done by the hundreds of information professionals involved specifically in buying, is to align the ethical – equity and social justice, and sustainability – as well as the practical and financial needs of their communities, with the suppliers.
With consortia writing-up new purchasing frameworks that include new environmental or social conditions, sectors are incorporating the concerns of their communities into the buying process. In the absence of legislation, it is sometimes up to our members to work out where challenges lie and how to get changes in motion. In this issue we talk to Caroline Ball, Academic Librarian, University of Derbyshire and #ebooksos campaigner about how transparency over the use of data by some vendors needs to be addressed, and how the sector could mobilise to do it.
For vendors themselves, the dynamics of the library market makes it a rich area for innovation. For example, last year we looked at the academic sector’s Plan B in its negotiations with Elsevier, a process that invigorated relationships with new providers as well as existing ones. While focused on the procurement and
acquisitions officers within the academic, public, health and industrial library sectors, the pace of change in technology and society has meant a blurring of disci- plines and roles. CILIP’s membership and its areas of interest and influence are changing fast, as are the skills needed in librarianship and archives and our members working in knowledge and information management and other specialist information roles. This year’s content reflects some of this edge blurring.
We speak to buyer Matt Cox, recently appointed as Head of Content Delivery and Discovery at Anglia Ruskin Univer- sity, talks about the career itself, and how the skills required can come from other sectors, how to work with colleagues and keep aligned with their needs. He says aptitude and skills are becoming more important as the pool.
In public libraries much of the innova- tion is driven by financial pressures and in many cases this falls at the door of the buyers. We talk to Russel Barrow, Prin- cipal Librarian, Operations: West about how Hertfordshire library services have facilitated pop-up banking and how helpful training has been in developing a commer- cial strategy that keeps the public library ethos intact. IP
December 2023
INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL DIGITAL 31
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