Attempting Elegance

I’m tired of writing about vendors.

I’m tired of feeling like I need to write about vendors.

And so, despite the day I had yesterday, despite the tantalizing tweets that indicate to my followers that there’s a story there, I’m not going to write about vendors.

My next series of posts will by the synthesis of the three keynotes I did this spring on leadership in libraries, and I hope they come across well in writing, as they were well-received in person. I’m glad I waited to write any of them, because each iteration added something to my understanding of my topic. For example, one ABQLA attendee asked me “what is it you think librarians are most afraid of?” And I replied, “Getting yelled at.”

I’d note that I’m not afraid to get yelled at.  And so I will say one more thing right now about vendors:

I will email you when I choose to email you. I will call you when I choose to call you.  And I will write about you in public venues if and when I choose to, whether you like it or not, fully aware that my choices can have consequences. Deal with that. I have.

It was true when Sergeant Jackrum said it, and it’s true when I say it. I am not a shouty man. But by all that’s holy, vendors make me shouty. And I am not alone.

Harvard is shouting about Big Deal packages and why they, actually, are kind of crappy for libraries. FINALLY. This matters because Harvard (despite their current leadership crisis) is a voice that gets listened to, so when they get shouty, it is, intentionally or not also on behalf of all of us small fish.

Librarians and others are shouting about a kooky choice by Canadian Universities about copyright. Because, yeah, we need to be inventing problems in intellectual property law in higher education. Totally. Way to go, neighbors.

And me? Well.

I tweeted these today, after a phone call.

Hey, Libraryland Vendors: Do not cold call to try to sell me products for something not in our curriculum. DO YOUR RESEARCH FIRST. (duh.)

April 24, 2012 10:55 am via Twitter for MacReplyRetweetFavorite

@jenica26

Jenica Rogers

No. DO NOT CALL ME TO ASK IF I HAVE A NURSING PROGRAM. Find out first. Wasting my time does not make me like you. @baldgeekinmd

April 24, 2012 10:56 am via Twitter for MacReplyRetweetFavorite

@jenica26

Jenica Rogers

And I got an email from a vendor who refuses to stop contacting me directly, despite my many attempts to point her to our Collection Development Coordinator, except this one said something about how great it was to talk to me at Computers in Libraries. I talked to two vendors at CiL — one was Springshare, and one was LibraryThing, both of whom I enjoy working with, and this email was from neither of them. ARGH.

And then there’s the American Chemical Society. I’m headed to Albany with the SUNY Council of Library Directors Task Force on the ACS to meet with some reps from ACS Sales, oh joy. And on campus, we’ve requested pricing information for our 2012-2013 budget, as we need to meet with faculty before they leave for their summer commitments in anticipation of building our budget in June.  And ACS has not responded — not even an “ok, let me look into this…” message. Just silence.

LIBRARYLAND VENDORS: STOP MAKING ME SHOUTY. I AM NOT A SHOUTY MAN.

Also, you suck.

I don’t do this very often on this blog, but this is totally worth it: Go read this.

So now, a little more than halfway through the class, students are asked to turn their digital expertise and expectations upside-down: to use online search tools specifically for the purpose of figuring out what’s not available to them with the click of a mouse, and to go through the process themselves of making a portion of that non-digitized world available in the network realm for future use.

This debrief on an assignment is a great counterpoint to my last post about C.E. Murphy’s self-publishing adventures. You can draw your own conclusions, but mine is simple: I LOVE THIS IDEA. Librarians, particularly future-focused ones, talk lightly and with casual flippancy about the online information environment, but it’s a smart and timely reminder to consider what it takes to create that world.

In November, I discovered a Kickstarter project from an author I really like — C.E. Murphy — in which she proposed to write a novella about one of the major secondary characters in the Walker Papers series she’s been writing for the last several years. She wanted to write it, her publisher probably didn’t want to buy it, but maybe her fans wanted it? I gladly bought in, because I thought that it was a super-cool use of Kickstarter, and, hey, a novella about Gary! Rock on!

And then this happened.

“The “No Dominion” campaign just passed $17,000. You, my readers, are paying me more than any New York City publisher has paid me up front for a book. This *blows my mind*. To little tiny bits. Itty bitty bits. I will have to spend rather a lot of time collecting all those bits so I can write you TWO NOVELLAS, FOUR SHORT STORIES, 3 chapters of a book that doesn’t exist, and, um, a partridge in a pear tree, I guess. Seriously: the wordcount we’re looking at here is right around 90K, which is absolutely no question about it a book’s worth of words. “

In the end, the campaign broke the $20,000 mark. 517 backers offered up more than $20,000 directly to the author so that she could afford to create something we wanted to read. I think that is a remarkable thing, and that it indicates something about the future of publishing. Consider that because of this Kickstarter she had the cash and the time and the desire, all at the same time, to write something that there is a proven and known demand for. And which she was able to distribute herself, because sending 517 e-pub files via email is no big these days. And which she can then re-sell to a traditional house if she so chooses, because there are plenty of readers out there who are not reached by Kickstarter, the internet, or e-pub files. And which the traditional publishing houses ought to be paying very close attention to.

The future is now. The traditional publishers need to do more than react to that.

And so I also emailed Murphy, because I just thought it was the thing to do.

Catie,

I’m pretty psyched about this; I love the Walker Papers, and Gary (who gives me hope that life doesn’t get boring after the rapidly-approaching 40) and think you’re a remarkable writer. So just in general this is awesome.

But on top of that, I’m a librarian, and right now libraries are caught in the middle of the publishers’ belated realization that the information economy changed while they weren’t paying attention. That realization really sucks for us — lots of rapid-fire changing of policy and protocol about ebook availability, lending, pricing, DRM, etc, and explaining that to our users in public and academic libraries is hell. Trying to plan our budgets, assess what we ought to buy in which formats, honoring our philosophical positions about which publishers are reactive jerks and which are good partners… it’s a hard time for us.

So I spend a lot of time thinking about the changing industries that provide information to our society, and about how it’s gonna look in 5 years, and which models have potential. Things like this Kickstarter — in which a group of fans paid you more for a (believed) novella than you’ve ever been paid by a traditional publisher up front for a novel — are the things that give me hope. There’s a remarkable future out there, and people like you and all the other creators who’re embracing the new models made possible by the internet while also working within the traditional system are the ones who are going to change our world. I’m sure of it (or, as sure as I am of anything in when you throw “people” and “the internet” into the mix).

So. Anyway. This thing you just did and allowed us to help you do is really damn cool, and I’m going to put No Dominion on my iPad for my trip to Wisconsin next week, and I’m going to love everything about the whole experience forever. When I read the update that said we’d pushed you into “you just bought a novel” territory, I turned to my boyfriend and said “let me tell you about the coolest thing I’ve ever been a part of.” And I still mean that. So thanks, on a bunch of fronts.

Jenica.