The Good Library Blog

Tim,

You seem to be indicating support for the 'direct delivery to libraries' element of the BSBL proposals as well as assuming that each community library has the capacity to maintain its own 'colourful and vibrant' relationship with a library supplier.

The problem we are finding at present, as we try more and more to get our library supplier to deliver a profiled selection service based on a working understanding of our community libraries' needs is that a) they can't do it consistently well or in a timely fashion, and b) by requiring this kind of service from them we suspect we are likely to have some of our discount skimmed off to pay for it in the future.

Please don't buy into the assumption - as BSBL innocently does - that library suppliers are ready for the improvements that we are all seeking. As well as signficant capacity issues for them, there are commercial pressures which no-one seems to be recognising.

Our Bib Services team at present are functioning as our centralised experts in what was actually ordered, what we should be paying for it, whether it has actually arrived in the right quantities, and what to do about the constant stream of mismatches with the selection profiles that we have in place.

We have looked at the scope for direct delivery to our branches, but we recognise that we would just be dispersing and duplicating this supply monitoring task to sites and teams who could really do without having to spend time putting right the suppliers' errors - sites and teams whose priorities are the promotion and delivery of the end product, rather than matching delivery notes to invoices.

We are genuinely trying to find efficiencies here. For example, in our particular case, re-cataloguing was a pastime we gave up many years ago. We now manage with suppliers' records and live with the occasional shortcoming.

I remember learning from a management guru that the more you need to have quality control procedures in place at the *end* of your process, rather than ensuring quality at the *start* of the process, the less efficient that process is going to be. I would love to be able to remove the quality control procedures from our supply processes and commit those resources away from our Bib Services team to the front line: the problem is, our partners in this process - the library suppliers - don't have the quality built in at the front of the process to the point where I can trust them to get it right first time and every time.

Given the choice, I would back off the vibrancy and colour at present and simply ask for suppliers who deliver what they promise, consistently and accurately, first time and every time.

Philip

I'm with you on all this--but you haver to make sure your suppliers do what you have asked them to do - and make sure that it costs no more than you have agreed. If they don't do what you want- I'm afraid it's your own fault.

One of the problems is that library services ask suppliers for too many needless things-- cataloguing and processing, specification of how invoices are laid out etc. If we could eliminate all that waste-- then we could get the suppliers to concentrate on what we really want..

I'm sure some suppliers are more accurate sometimes than others-- but you have to have zero tolerance of inaccuracy whether it be of deliveries or bibliographic data

You mustn't accept a situation in which suppliers don't deliver what they promise consistently and accurately - just don't pay them until they do. They'll catch on. It doesn't need a big department at your end- just total focus on what you want. Your management 'guru' was right-- you have to get accuracy high up the chain, otherwise you spend masses of time and money putting it right later on- which is what you sound as if you are doing. You don't need a 'bib services' department at all. The answer is not for you to spend large sums putting right what your suppliers should have done in the first place

Look at the number of people who come on this site and say that the cataloguing done by agencies has to be checked and refined--- for goodness sake, how can they afford it? it's shocking that they say that and just indicates bad management

Remember that supply chain management is tough. If you see how Tesco's insist on timely delivery of, say vegetables, or how news wholesalers manage their daily national distribution, you really see how suppliers are forced to give high efficiency. The library service is poor by comparison-- but that is largely because libraries do too much double checking and have allowed suppliers to be lax

I'd love to help you - if you wished.

I used to know someone who bought a dishwasher - but every time before she put the plates into it, she washed them in the sink and when she took them out of the machine she dried them carefully. 'Why?' we asked her. ' In case it doesn't work properly' she said. The public library service behaves just like that lady.