Living within the library materials budget today and leveraging resources is not easy. As competition for new products grows, budgets shrink, and costs soar. Publishers have expenses to cover to create a product or release it in new formats, market, distribute and license it. Increasingly, the margins on sales are slim and everyone wants a deal. Libraries are building collections by balancing need with value.
Success in doing so is dependent on good customer relationships between libraries and publisher/providers. As library staff members become increasingly savvy about business details, following best practices, and publishers seek competitive returns on investment, negotiations can become lengthy and complex. Major considerations in any transaction are price, licensing terms, and how much latitude there is for compromise when deals are made by consortia with complex factors such as when third-party providers are involved. Each party ultimately wants to pay or receive a fair price and to cultivate good business relationships.
This session will focus on how to achieve that without promising more than will be delivered. The panel of librarians and publishers/providers explore how both sides of a transaction initiate, cultivate, foster and maintain professional and business relationships through compromise and negotiation with each other for the terms of the individual sale and for the future.
