Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Vendors
A "Factini", given out on SLA exhibit hall floor
SCENE :
EXT – MEAN STREETS OF CRYSTAL CITY, VIRGINIA – NIGHT. I’m attending the Computers in Libraries conference. My conference husband and I were walking a friend back to her hotel (which was located approximately in West Virginia) for the night. We are approached by a couple drunkenly swaying towards us.
Drunk woman: Heeeeeeyyy….
Drunk man: Oh, gawd….it’s some more of those f**king librarians!
The drunk couple then stumbled on towards the Crystal City Hyatt.
My friends and I looked at each other. “Did they…did they just say what I thought they said?” I assumed that they were people staying in our hotel, tired of tripping over laptop cords and the myriad other inconveniences caused by several hundred librarians taking over a smallish hotel. We ran into them again later that night at the Hyatt bar and, upon seeing them in the light, realized that they were vendor reps working the CiL exhibit hall.
END SCENE
As you’ve probably noticed, Gentle Reader, I think a lot about vendor relations and libraries. Even so, the above Computers in Libraries experience was the first time it ever occurred to me that vendors might not like librarians. I mean, librarians are the good guys! They’re the big, mean corporations marching through our budgets like Sherman through Georgia! What do they have to be grumpy about?
Last month I attended the Special Libraries Association annual meeting. This was my first time attending the full SLA conference and it was an eye opening experience. From the exhibit hall Factinis to the vendor sponsored receptions to vendor reps attending programming to the fact that elected president of the organization WORKS FOR A VENDOR and at least one board member of the legal division does as well…well, my mind was blown at how much vendors were woven in throughout the SLA fabric. And you know what? I kinda liked it.
I guess it’s because so many of the SLA membership come from a corporate/business/law firm background, but there’s a very matter-of-fact business relationship with vendors at SLA. The vendor-librarian relationship felt like one of equals. It was very refreshing. I was able to discuss product issues at several points throughout the conference with representatives and develop personal relationships with them – which was much preferable to the gauntlet run that the AALL exhibit hall feels like.
I can’t help but feel that many librarians have a major martyrdom complex when it come to vendors. They’re the big evil corporations and we’re the saintly librarians who are just trying to help people after all and isn’t so awful that they keep taking advantage of us? I am guilty of feeling this way myself.
So, yes, over the past six months, I’ve had a bit of a change of heart about vendors. The “love” in title of this post is a bit of a misnomer, as I still don’t *love* vendors - I just couldn’t resist the movie allusion. I have, however, gained a certain respect for vendors.
Now, vendors are far from perfect. They still pump out a bunch of inferior products at ridiculous prices and the time has come where libraries and other cultural institutions can replicate much of their offerings better and cheaper. And some of their business practices cause me to give them the old side eye. And I get damn near giddy when I read about things like the University of PEI fighting rising subscription prices. But they’re not ZOMG EVIL and an antagonistic relationship with them is only going to harm libraries in the end. Mutual respect, open communication and equal partnerships are what the librarian-vendor relationship needs.
Because just as it’s getting to a point where librarians can do without some of the services traditionally offered by vendors, vendors are able to do end runs around librarians and get directly to our patrons. Exhibit A: Westlaw’s “Are you on a first name basis with your librarian?” advertisement from last year. And how many of you librarians have had students come up to the ref desk and mentioned that they purchased a PDF of an article that we could have gotten them for free via ILL?
Is hanging out with vendors at conferences going to solve all of these problems? No. But I think if we approach vendors as equals instead of expecting them to treat us like customers (with the attendant “the customer is always right!” mentality) we’ll have a better relationship and better products. And as for the tired meme that librarians who go work for vendors (and, to a certain extent, professional associations) have “gone to the dark side” or “sold out”…*pfft* Again, vendors (and orgs) having an understanding of what the daily needs and desires of the library community are can only be an improvement over them trying to figure it out via grumpy listserv postings or annual meeting focus groups.
(Hmm..maybe I should have titled this post “Vendors are from Mars, Librarians are from Venus”.)
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that there’s currently a dust-in LawLibraryLand over AALL’s Committee on Vendor Relations and the appointment of a vendor representative. (See LLB posts here and here for starters) I’m not sure what the right answer is, but I can say that in my years as an AALL member, I haven’t felt like CRIV was any different than any of the other AALL committees. Perhaps a single AALL representative to vendors (much like the AALL Government relations office) would allow for long term relationship building which a rotating committee roster simply cannot provide. I also think AALL should take a page from SLA and have more involvement from vendors at all levels of the organization. Close your eyes for a minute and imagine Anne Ellis as president of AALL…crazy right? But why is that?
So, again, I don’t have all (or any) answers, but I am planning on using the second half of 2010 to approach vendors as an equal partner in the information game instead of demanding that they be nice to me and wondering why they are treating a business relationship as just that.
LITA (and its predecessor, ISAD), my home division within ALA, has always had quite a few members who work for vendors. To the best of my knowledge, such people have been treated the same as other members.
Maybe there’s a distinction between vendors as corporate entities and people who work for or, in some cases (e.g. consultants) *are* vendors. The former would tend to have institutional membership and not be eligible for committees (since they’re not people); the latter have been and are committee members, chairs, division presidents, what have you. Which, I would say, is as it should be. (Of course, depending on your definition, I worked for vendors for most of my adult life.)
I’m a recent LIS grad. The faculty in my MLIS programme reminded us day in and day out that one of the viable work opportunities an MLIS can bring you is in vendor services, and it’s true. Are all vendors even knuckle-dragging scum? – certainly not. Like most of us, they are employed in a strong organization and they’re working hard to make lives easier for people on all sides of the vendor relationship.
Frankly, I’m opposed to most current vendor practices today, and I’m one to cheer on Mark Leggott at UPEI, as well (I’ve met the man several times now and he’s the kind of guy who gets things done.). But at the same time, I know that at the beginning of the day vendors want to find solutions that work for all parties, and at end of the day vendors want to go home to their families, like librarians do, too. Their goals are different but their aims are often similar, so sometimes I think we should cut vendors a little slack, especially when they could be carrying the same pedigree (i.e., the MLIS) as us.