From: Tony Sanfilippo <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2017 21:04:57 -0500

This issue fascinates me because it touches on the intersection of
librarianship and bookselling. In bookselling what you're talking
about has a name. It's called merchandising. That refers to the
display of new products in a way that brings attention to them. In
bookselling it can be controversial because there are monetary rewards
available for merchandising in the form of a practice called co-op,
where a publisher pays a bookseller to augment the cost of advertising
in local media with the bookseller, or the publisher pays for
prominent placement in the bookseller's store, or on the bookseller's
website (yes, that website).

What fascinates me about this issue is the reluctance of librarians to
take on an editorial role. In the case of the bookseller, they can
choose whether the promotion of a title is ultimately in the best
interest of the store and if they're willing to make the Faustian
bargain behind a co-op agreement because they ultimately feel that
what they're promoting is in sync with what the store is saying about
its stock.This economic dilemma, taking money from the supplier, isn't
an issue for the librarian.

For librarians, it's an entirely different matter and the ethics of
librarianship seem to frown on the kind of editorial and marketing
decisions that bring attention to its collections' foci. Librarians
seem to value objective discovery over their own informed
recommendations.

While this might seem like a leap, I think that ethos (which I find
librarians also bring to their publishing efforts,) doesn't serve them
well. They have long been wise and trusted gatekeepers. Why is it when
the rubber hits the road they take a step back and defer to the patron
and insist the patron is best served by offering a largely unedited
variety of choices rather than also offering an opinion on the quality
of the options? That is what a good bookseller is doing when he
merchandises. Why is that so antithetical to the mission of the
library? Isn't the inability to discern what's worth paying attention
to how we got where we are today? Shouldn't those of us who can
discern the difference between the wheat and the chaff being doing
more to promote the wheat?

Best,
Tony

Tony Sanfilippo, Director
Ohio State University Press
180 Pressey Hall
1070 Carmack Road
Columbus, OH 43210-1002
ohiostatepress.org
(614) 292-7818

On Tue, Jan 24, 2017 at 5:33 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> From: Steve Oberg <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2017 02:58:03 +0000
>
> Jim and others,
>
> I agree that this is a very good series. To answer your question, we don’t publicize these in a special way except perhaps to highlight them in course- or subject-related guides (we use LibGuides from Springshare). Also, we don’t shelve them together.
>
> But the main reason I’m writing is to take issue with your choice of words: “…I worry that they would disappear into our OPAC and be essentially invisible.” I think you were focusing on a way to highlight the series as a set and to make them more visible, physically — but putting these in the OPAC is precisely a way that will help to draw attention to them. And they are easily collocated in most OPACs by series title (“Very Short Introductions”). Just typing in the words “very short introductions” into a keyword search in our OPAC brings them readily together.
>
> Over twenty five years of work in a wide variety of large and small academic libraries, as well as a large corporate library, has shown me that one of the best ways to ensure use of library materials is for them to be properly cataloged. I’m including e-resources in this, not just print and other traditional formats. Over and over again, I can point to cases where usage was low _until_ cataloging was done and the material was readily findable in the OPAC, and then usage took off. Somehow it still seems to surprise. It shouldn’t.
>
> There are of course larger philosophical issues at play and I have never held the view that the OPAC — or even our discovery layer — is the center of the universe for our users to find everything they want. It isn’t, and it hasn’t been for a long time. But it _is_ still a critical source of information and exposure for our materials, one that we should not overlook.
>
> Steve
>
> Steve Oberg
> Assistant Professor of Library Science
> Electronic Resources and Serials
> Wheaton College (IL)
> +1 (630) 752-5852
>
> NASIG Vice-President/President-Elect
>
> On Jan 23, 2017, at 7:04 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> From: "Jim O'Donnell" <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Sat, 21 Jan 2017 07:35:25 -0700
>
> Oxford Press publishes a series of useful and smart paperbacks under
> the "Very Short Introductions" rubric:  502 volumes at last count on
> topics like:
>
> Buddhist Ethics, Cancer, Catholicism, Chaos, Children's Literature,
> Chinese Literature, Choice Theory, Christian Art, Citizenship, Civil
> Engineering, Classics, Clausewitz, Climate
>
> They sell for about $8 each on Amazon.  A license for digital access
> for a campus might cost as much as a complete print set I'm guessing.
> They're very well done and offer an appreciably-better-than-Google
> introduction to a wide variety of subjects.  But I worry that they
> would disappear into our OPAC and be essentially invisible.  I'd be
> tempted to buy the full print set and shelve them together in a
> visible place:  interesting if that were a way to make the print
> version get more use than digital would.
>
> So I write now to ask if anyone knows of library experience promoting
> this series, either digital or print.
>
> Jim O'Donnell
> Arizona State University