We have historically used Baker & Taylor for most of our ordering. We have
found them to be pretty good on order fulfillment as well as promptness,
especially with priority orders. I don't have any hard figures to define
what "pretty good" means. We have been less satisfied with their
performance in handling the standing orders we have with them. It is
sometimes difficult to contact our representative; when I leave her a
voice-mail message, I usually end up calling her a second time because
she has not gotten back to me. Also, we usually receive standing-order
items more promptly when we get them directly from the publisher than
when we get them from Baker & Taylor.

We are starting to use Brodart more often this year because they offer a
customized selection-list service for collection development purposes.
They can send the lists to us on disc; we load the lists into our local
Dynix system; our selectors check off their selections; our acquisitions
people convert the selection lists to order records in our acquisitions
module; and the orders are sent off to Brodart electronically. We don't
have this program fully operational yet, so I can't say yet how it will
work for it. Our selectors do like the printed selection lists they have
been receiving, and our Brodart representative has been very helpful and
responsive to our needs and concerns.

Best wishes for your library career. I switched over from teaching 18
years ago and have never looked back.

 Mary Oswalt <moswalt@LIBRIS.CI.WESTMINSTER.CO.US>

----------
Mireille de Vidas <MIREILLE70@AOL.COM> wrote:
>Hello,
>
> I am an MLS student and new to the Serialst list.  I was wondering if
> any acquisitions librarians use either Baker & Taylor, Brodart, or
> Ingram to do the major portion of their ordering from, and if so, what
> have your experiences with these companies been like in terms of service
> quality.
>
> ...
> Thank you in advance for your time.
>
> Mireille de Vidas
> <MIREILLE70@AOL.COM>