I seem to be coming to this thread late, but wanted to throw in a
couple of additional thoughts. We also get the Boston Globe, and
even though we're located in Tennessee we seem to get it within two
or three days of publication. The only time we didn't get it was
during the major snow storm that hit Boston. Such extraordinary
circumstances are thankfully rare, but I didn't think it would do
any good to give our supplier grief over a week's worth of issues,
especially when we don't claim them and only keep the most recent
twelve issues.

I've also had a bad experience with local courier services. For
years we got the Wall Street Journal delivered to the same place
every morning by the local courier service. Then they changed
couriers. The new courier's delivery people claimed they couldn't
find the building, although no one would ever call to tell us this.
When I called to report non-delivery I'd tell them exactly where to
deliver the newspaper. Someone would supposedly be sent out, but we
still wouldn't get the issue. This went on for a week, and I
cancelled our order. A student now goes and picks up the Wall
Street Journal at the campus bookstore every morning. Because the
bookstore gives the library a 10% discount it comes out to about
the same amount as our previous subscription.

I feel bad in this case for our vendor (Ebsco) because we had to
cancel our subscription with them. They had no control over the
courier, but still lost business because of it.

--On Wednesday, March 23, 2005 8:44 AM -0600 "BORCHERT, JAMES"
<James.Borchert@SDSTATE.EDU> wrote:

> Thank you to everyone who shared their experiences and offered
> their suggestions.  I learned that we are most definitely not the
> only library that has these problems. Unfortunately, we have no
> news kiosks; our campus bookstore doesn't carry the titles we
> need and the only Borders we have is on the other side of the
> state. I contacted Barnes and Noble (only an hour away!), but
> they do not distribute newspapers either.
> Perhaps there is more we can do in negotiating contracts with
> subscription vendors because while the actual problem lies with
> them or the publishers, we [libraries] are blamed by the patron
> for not providing the newspapers in a timely manner.  This is
> something we definitely do not need as libraries are seemingly
> becoming less popular anyway and we are trying to make ourselves
> more attractive to increase our gate counts.
>
> Thanks again for all of your comments!
>
> James
>
> James Borchert
> Serials Department
> H.M. Briggs Library
> Box 2115
> South Dakota State University
> Brookings, SD 57007-1098
> James_Borchert@sdstate.edu
>

Christopher Allen Waldrop
Serials Coordinator
Order Services Department
Vanderbilt University Library
Ph: 615-343-3831
Fax: 615-343-8834