Have you done the math on direct vs. subscription agent? I am assuming your Dean is bringing this up as a cost-savings measure so quantifying the costs of each option would be my approach. A lot of people who don’t work with serials do not understand the cost savings in terms of centralizing and automating claiming, renewing, and paying invoices that an agent and the ILS provides. So show them the $$. And be thorough. There are extra costs in maintaining publisher contact information, reconciling lost payments, university costs for cutting checks for each and every publisher, etc. Estimate staffing hours needed for all these things and give that to your Dean. I would be shocked if it was less than the service charges + current staffing hours to work with subscription agent.

 

Fortunately, our Dean worked for a subscription agent in a former life so she understands the value of having a subscription agent.

 

 

 

Hello all,

 

Our Dean has been making noises about the possibility of our abandoning the use of a subscription agent and handling subscription/renewal/claiming/billing issues ourselves.  Despite our having reduced the number of individually priced titles from thousands to hundreds by grasping publisher packages, I still shudder at the idea of trying to do this ourselves. 

 

Over the past couple of years I have seen eloquent justifications for the use of serials jobbers posted to the listserv by colleagues, particularly in the wake of the Swets collapse.  Regrettably, I cannot find any of these in my e-mail archive.   So I appeal to our collective wisdom for specifics as to why the use of a jobber is efficient and cost-effective.  Certainly I have reasons why I would prefer not to discontinue the use of a jobber, but being able to include comments from other libraries will simply strengthen my argument, or remind me of things that I have forgotten or never experienced.

 

So please feed me your comments, justifications, and experiences, good or bad. 

 

Thanks.

 

mb

 

W. Michael Bell

Assistant Dean and Head of Collection Services Department

UTC Library

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

423-425-2670

mike-bell@utc.edu

 

 

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