October is National Medical Librarians Month

October is National Medical Librarians Month (NMLM) and on behalf of all the employee owners at Matthews, we would like to thank you for all you do. I have had the privilege over the past 14 years to work with just about every type of medical librarian. I deal with directors, serials librarians, collection development librarians, technical services librarians, reference librarians, electronic resources librarians, catalogers, hospital librarians and consumer health librarians. Each type of librarian serves a special purpose and need within the library and I enjoy helping them in any way I can. Keep up the good work!

Remember, next month is our “November to Remember” special where we offer a 20% discount on all published titles from our stock publishers. Save up those orders and save big next month! Let me know if you need any lists run. Contact me at ashleyw@mattmccoy.com  or 800-633-2665 x374.

I’ll be attending the Charleston Conference in a couple weeks (Nov 4-6). I am looking forward to hearing what the hot topics are this year. I will report back what I learn on my next blog.

I thought I would end with a great quote a customer of mine has at the end of her e-mails:

“The Library connects us with the insight and knowledge, painfully extracted from Nature, of the greatest minds that ever were, with the best teachers, drawn from the entire planet and from all our history, to instruct us without tiring, and to inspire us to make our own contribution to the collective knowledge of the human species. I think the health of our civilization, the depth of our awareness about the underpinnings of our culture and our concern for the future can all be tested by how well we support our libraries.” Carl Sagan

Budgets got you down? Matthews can help!

One of the most common things I heard at MLA this year was, “We’ve had some major cuts to our book budget. Are you hearing this from other libraries too?” The answer is, “Yes.” There are some libraries that have the same budget or have an actual increase, but for the most part, library book budgets have been cut.

Just because you don’t have as much money as you have had in the past doesn’t mean that Matthews won’t work just as hard for you. Here are some suggestions to help you through these tough economic times:

1. Take advantage of our March and November 20% off published titles from our stock publisher lists. If the requests/orders can wait, save them up to take advantage of our specials. You can save your orders on our website bookshelf feature and add to a shopping cart whenever you are ready to order.

2. Set up a deposit account with us. Many times, we can offer higher discounts if you can deposit part or all of you book budget with us. We will send monthly statements so you can keep track of your money.

3. Is all your money going to electronic resources now? If so, buy your ebooks from us. We have a partnership with ebrary and you can buy their perpetual access titles or subscription collections from us.

4. Need help pulling a list together for grant money received? We can help with that too. Tell us what type of books are needed for the grant and we will pull a list together. We can also make sure they are billed separately from your other orders.

5. Have you had to cancel all or many of your standing orders? Just because you can’t have the books shipped automatically anymore does not mean that you cannot receive notification when these titles become available. We can mail slips or send e-mails when new editions or volumes become available for items that you previously received automatically. You can receive slips on some items and books on others. We are flexible.

6. Have you seen an offer from a competitor or publisher that is too good to pass up? Don’t be afraid to ask if we will match it.

7. Matthews is a participating vendor with the WorldCat Cataloging Partner (WCP) program. This service is meant to reduce the cost of cataloging for libraries. WCP will deliver OCLC MARC records that match the titles you order from us and set your holdings in WorldCat. This can save staff time and money.

8. Watch for our MLA specials. This year we ran a special giving 20% off Lippincott Williams & Wilkins titles from May 18th – August 14th. Today is the last day of the special. I hope everyone was able to take advantage of it!

9. Sign up for our library e-mails. This is the best way to stay informed of any specials or news from the library division.

Please do not hesitate to contact me if you want any additional information on these suggestions, ashleyw@mattmccoy.com or 800-633-2665 x374.

Q & A Session with Editor-in-Chief of Doody’s Core Titles, Anne Hennessy

Q: Anne, thanks so much for taking the time to answer some questions about the 2009 edition of the DCT. I really appreciate it. This is the sixth year of Doody’s Core Titles in the Health Sciences (DCT), and it is the same price as it was in 2004. How is that possible in this day and age?

A: As you know, Ashley, we’ve been serving the health sciences library market for over 16 years and we’re acutely aware of the budget constraints librarians work under. As a result, we’ve instituted very few price increases for our products for librarians over the years, and only when absolutely necessary. Doody’s Review Service, which we’ve been publishing since 1995, has seen only two price increases, although we’ve made many important additions and improvements to it during that time. Doody’s Core Titles is already in its sixth year and has been vastly improved since its inception, but we thought it important, especially in these uncertain economic times, to keep the price down.

Q: I know there are some new features to the DCT this year and I’d like to go over each. The first new feature as listed on your marketing information is “eBook links—we provide links directly to eBook aggregators that carry online versions of titles on the list.” This is a really great feature. Which aggregators have partnered with you to provide this feature? Also, I believe I heard that this feature is also available on your Doody’s Review Service, which covers a lot more titles. Essentially, you have the closest thing to a “Books in Print” of health science eBooks on the market, correct?

A: Your blog after the Charleston Conference suggesting the need for a “Books in Print” for eBooks got us thinking. Adding links to eBook aggregators is something we knew we needed to do as more and more library budgets were shifting from print to digital resources.

Currently, we are working with six eBook aggregators: ebrary, Books@Ovid, MDConsult/Nursing Consult, NetLibrary, R2 Digital Library and STAT!Ref. In a view of a list of titles, a link will appear at the bottom of any title with an available digital version. Clicking on that link will bring up the full record for that title, and links to all of the aggregators who supply an e-version. We fully expect to add more eBook aggregators in the coming months.

So, yes, I guess you’re right – Doody’s Review Service, which provides access to our entire database of reviews and data on health sciences titles, is the closest thing to a “Books in Print” for health sciences eBooks! In fact, we now believe Doody’s Core Titles and Doody’s Review Service are the only e-book locator sources on the market.

Q: The next new feature of the DCT 2009 is “BH icon – we’ve added an icon to DCT title records to let you know that a version of the title appeared on the final Brandon/Hill lists of 2003-2004.” Have you had a lot of requests from librarians for this service?

A: Librarians had relied on the Brandon/Hill lists for almost 40 years, and rightly so. As a result, distributors, like Matthews, have continued to indicate Brandon/Hill titles and new editions of those titles in their catalog. It’s only natural that librarians would continue to want to know whether an earlier version of a title appeared on the final Brandon/Hill lists. We were guided in our decision to include this feature both by our own market research and by our Library Board of Advisors.

Q: As a follow-up question to the BH icon feature, will DCT 2009 users be able to do any sort of sorting by Brandon-Hill icon?

A: DCT 2009 will not have a sort feature for Brandon/Hill titles, but the icon is prominently displayed in the title record. However, users will be able to search and filter the list to make it most useful to them – by specialty, titles new to the list, price, score, availability as an eBook from all aggregators or just one, to name a few. DCT 2009 also makes it easy for users to print or export their custom lists to a spreadsheet.

Q: The last new feature is the “Monthly newsletter – we alert you to new eBooks and new editions of DCT titles, as well as valuable industry news.” Regarding the “new eBook” alert, this means that when a print title becomes available as an eBook, the DCT user will receive notification? I am assuming this is because publishers don’t always make the e-version of the book available at the same time as the print? Will you send notification when each aggregator makes it available, in case they don’t all do it at the same time?

Also, you state that you will alert the DCT user when new editions of DCT titles are available. Will these new editions also be scored or will you reference the score of the previous edition?

A: A monthly newsletter is a natural addition to DCT. Although the list is published just once a year, we know librarians want to keep abreast of all of the publishing activity that goes on throughout the year. We thought this was a good way to alert librarians when an eBook version of a title becomes available, which may happen at any time after print publication. Since we’re representing a number of aggregators, we’ll report whenever any of the aggregators makes an e-version available.

It’s also important for librarians to know when a new edition of DCT title is published. For example, we already know that titles preliminarily selected for DCT 2009 have new editions pending late in the year. When and if a new edition is published, we’ll report on it in the newsletter. However, the new edition does not automatically replace the edition selected for the list. Each title, or edition, is selected and scored on its own merits by the librarian selectors.

Situated as we are at the nexus of librarians, publishers, distributors, and expert reviewers, we have a unique view of this corner of the world, so an important part of the monthly newsletter will be an article on a hot topic of interest to health sciences librarians.

Q: Is there anything else you would like our readers to know about DCT 2009 or Doody’s Review Service?

A: Both Doody’s Core Titles 2009 and Doody’s Review Service are the result of close collaboration with our customers, the librarians who rely on our services for their collection development needs. We like to characterize these collection development tools as developed for librarians by librarians.

To meet the varied needs and budgets of librarians, Doody’s Core Titles is offered in two versions – Basic and Premium. Both versions have the new features we’ve talked about here and both are easy to access, sort, print and export. The Premium version includes reviews of any titles on the list from Doody’s Review Service, which in previous editions has meant that over half of the 2,000+ Doody’s Core Titles include expert reviews. Premium also includes easy links to Google Book Search where available. According to the Journal of the Medical Library Association, “Electronic Resources Review,” July 2005: “Doody’s Core Titles is a very useful collection management tool — well worth the reasonable price.”

Doody’s Review Service is our comprehensive collection development tool, with access to our database of 100,000+ titles and 25,000+ reviews, which incorporates the latest edition of Doody’s Core Titles and includes a weekly email update with new reviews, new titles and new eBooks. The print predecessor to Doody’s Review Service, Doody’s Health Sciences Book Review Journal, was endorsed by the Medical Library Association as “a valuable collection development and reference tool.”

We have been gratified by the response to both of these products by members of the health sciences library community and we will continue to innovate and improve with their help.

***
I want to thank Anne Hennessy again for taking the time to answer my questions. The 2009 DCT will be available on May 15th, 2009. Please e-mail me at ashleyw@mattmccoy.com if you would like to place an order!

Guilt by MLAssociation

MLA is in Honolulu, Hawaii this year and I get to go! Isn’t it exciting?! Well then, why do I feel so guilty for being able to go? I didn’t pick the location. Any time I talk to anyone at my work who isn’t going, I feel as though they think I’m going on vacation on the company’s dime and I’m not going to do a lick of work.

I get the feeling that some librarians were immediately turned down when they submitted their travel request just because it is in Hawaii. Everyone assumes it is going to be so expensive. The hotel is cheaper than Chicago was last year! The airfare is more but maybe only a couple hundred more than if you fly from Indianapolis to San Francisco. If you take the price difference between the Hawaii hotel and the Chicago hotel, you have your couple hundred dollars. Plus, there are some really good deals to be found.

We are “going green” with our booth again this year. One way we want to do this is by making sure we don’t bring too many handouts and giveaways. So, I e-mailed the MLA Show Management to see if they had any numbers yet of attendees. They said “MLA is down 35% from MLA ’08, which is not bad given the weak economy and low registrations for other meetings in the US. We anticipate reaching numbers ranging between 800 and 1,000.” Not too shabby. I’d travel 5,000 miles for that.

I love going to MLA. I love to see my customers and catch up and meet the people I’ve only spoken to on the phone. I love to tell everyone about all the new things going on in the library division and to get a lead for a potential new customer. When I’m not in the booth, I like to attend the plenary and poster sessions. I like to walk around the exhibit hall and see all the familiar faces from past meetings. I like having coffee with my colleagues and dinner with my customers. I like hanging out with the people I work with in the booth and discuss things we’d like to do for the library division in the future. If it means I have to go to Hawaii to do all this, well I guess I will have to make that sacrifice.

See you at MLA. Please stop by our booth #811 and say “Aloha!”

Three Things You Need to Know…

There is lots going on in the library division right now and I wanted to let everyone know about them. Three things to be more precise…

First, our 20% March Madness sale just started (a little early). The sale is for 20% off our stock publisher list on published titles and ends March 31st. I hope everyone will be able to take advantage of it. We also appreciate our publisher sponsors of the promotion. If anyone needs any reports run of what has published in certain subject areas or from the Brandon-Hill or Doody Core Title lists, please let me know.

Second, we have compiled our Average Price Report for 2008. This list shows the average price of books by NLM class for 2008. In total, there was a 6% increase over last year. We also received/cataloged over 500 more books than the year before. I swear, I think we received them all the last two weeks of December. I’m sure my approval plan customers think that (sorry). With everything going electronic it might be surprising that we received so many more books.  Believe it or not, we’ve added new publishers and there is still a lot of new material being published (although publishers don’t print as many copies). We are expecting a 7% increase in the price of books for 2009, which is the same as last year. This is explained in a letter that accompanies the Average Price Report.  The report can also be found on www.matthewsbooks.com, in the “Downloads” link.  We hope you will find this information useful for budgeting purposes.  If you did not receive this information via e-mail, let me know and we will add you to our marketing e-mail list. 

Lastly, I have put together a sort of “selected list” of ebrary titles. This list is for anyone but might serve best those who are just starting an ebook collection and need something that will cover all aspects of the health sciences. The list is broken down by Medicine, Allied Health, Nursing, Dentistry and Veterinary Medicine. There are also some titles noted as “starter pack.” These are the “core” ebrary titles. This is just my opinion. In compiling the list, I looked at the print equivalent to see if they were on the Brandon-Hill or Doody Core Title Lists, had a Doody Star Rating or library purchase history. You can use the list as an order form or as a quick reference to see the types of health science related titles available from ebrary. Please contact me at ashleyw@mattmccoy.com  for the Excel file or if you have any questions.

Lessons I Learned in an African Library, By Guest Blogger: Heidi Currie, MLS — Regional Account Manager, Southeast Territory

Since I was a high school student, I always dreamed of seeing and experiencing Africa. The real Africa, mind you, not the luxury-tented safari Africa that so many travelers experience. After a year of research, I located a company that sponsors “volunteer vacations” in Africa and signed up for their Tanzania program. The Tanzania program specialized in sending volunteers to a small village and having the volunteers teach classes in English. Other aspects of the work that we were to do involved small construction projects for the local boarding school.

After figuring out where exactly Tanzania was, I applied for my month-long visa, got the endless number of “recommended” inoculations, and packed my bag for my big adventure. After being stranded in Dubai (always buy travel insurance in case the third-world country’s airline goes bankrupt two days before you need to board that plane…I learned that lesson here) I finally made it down to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and met the smiling face of Mohammed, our driver. I think that I actually burst into tears when I saw him holding up the sign looking for me at the airport.

Once all the members of the group arrived in Dar, we spent the night at a hotel on the Indian Ocean getting to know one another over the warm, but delicious, local brew. The next morning, we got into our small bus and embarked on the 12 hour drive to the village that would be hosting us for the next month. In reality, it was probably only about a 300 mile drive, but the road situation (or lack of, I should say) prolonged the drive into an uncomfortable, mind-numbing, dusty 12 hours. I won’t even get into the bathroom-break situations, but driving through the African countryside certainly never disappoints! We exclaimed and shrieked every time we saw an elephant, zebra or giraffe crossing the road. Mohammed was very amused at his carload of “mzungos”. Mzungo, we learned that day, literally means “white”. From this point on, no one in the village ever learned our name, but we were all greeted by smiling faces exclaiming “Jambo, mzungo!”.

The first day in the village, the headmaster of the school comes to meet us and finds out that there is a librarian in the group. He asks me if I would be willing to work separate from the group at their library helping them with a special project. This would be better than I imagined! I jumped at the chance! How incredible to spend my days working in their library!! The headmaster walked me into the village and introduced me to Mama Rachael, the librarian, who unfortunately spoke zero English. My few Swahili phrases that I had learned just barely got us through the motions of introductions. Luckily, the headmaster was fluent and showed me to my task. The job before me was about 12 boxes of papers that were old tests, study guides, etc for all the classes that the students at the school can take. Since the village has no electricity, it therefore has no way to photocopy tests and guides for their students. The Tanzanian government issues the village schools all the tests that it needs for their student body, but no more than once. So recycling is absolutely critical to the school’s student body and teachers. All tests are used over and over as well as any other “handouts” that the students can get. The problem with the way that they were being “filed” is that there was no method to their filing. The papers were literally dumped into boxes. It took me and a student three weeks to separate all the papers out and bind them together for future use.

The best part of the whole project was getting back to the basics mentally and physically. The lack of running water and electricity can really freak out those of us who take that for granted. The town’s one small well that gave the locals their water ran dry the last two weeks we were there, and they take this all in stride, knowing that tomorrow morning, instead of walking the two miles to get their buckets of water, they’ll be walking 8 miles to the next village and back with the water. But the locals did all of this without a second thought. The children of the village all take on massive responsibilities by the age of 4 and 5, taking care of their siblings, herding cattle, working in the fields, and cooking, and don’t think twice about how hard their lives are in comparison to other children in the world. We had a child psychologist in our group who, two weeks into our program, remarked that he hadn’t heard a single child crying. In fact, none of us had, we just saw kids running around in tatters barefooted, laughing and playing with one another.

My favorite Swahili phrase that I learned in Tanzania was “nitakumbuka”, which translates into “I will remember”. What I will remember the most about my trip to Africa was the smiling and laughing faces of the locals and realizing that these people may not have the material wealth that we are used to, but they do have something that we don’t. They truly know and care about each member of their village. They know which children have been orphaned and they take care of them. They know which families may need a little extra food that week and they take care of them. It is a cultural awareness and pride that we should all strive to achieve in our own towns and communities. I came back to the US in a state of shock and embarrassment in remembering what I would complain about almost daily. Every morning I now mutter “nitakumbuka” when I wake up and try to remember what is really important in a happy life.

 

 

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year, one and all! (Sorry this is a little late, but I also send my Christmas cards out on the 24th ). It is time to make and hopefully keep our New Year’s resolutions. One of my New Year’s resolutions is to do more blog entries…

The next blog entry is fitting for the New Year. It is from our first guest blogger, Heidi Currie, MLS. Heidi works in our sales department but before that, worked in our library division for four years (I miss her). Heidi went on a volunteer vacation over the summer in Africa, and I asked her to share her experiences with us. There is something about visiting another culture that really puts life into perspective.

We have a winner!

Congratulations Jennifer Cassidy from Western University of Health Sciences.  You are the winner of free registration to MLA in Hawaii.  Please make sure you stop by our booth #811.  We look forward to seeing you in Hawaii.

Free Registration to MLA 2009 in Hawaii

Every year at MLA we have a drawing at our booth for free registration to the next year’s meeting. The winner in 2008 for free registration to MLA in Hawaii was Susan Swogger from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Health Sciences Library. She e-mailed me on Monday and said she would be unable to attend and asked if we could offer the registration to someone else who is going.

Is anyone else going who is reading this? If you are sure that you will be attending and are a MLA member, please post a comment to this blog. The first person to post a comment will receive the free registration.

I will look forward to announcing the winner!

What I learned from the Charleston Conference

Once again, the Charleston Conference did not disappoint.  The theme this year was “The Best of Times…The Worst of Times.”  After reading the first line of the Against the Grain article “eBooks in Academic Health Sciences Libraries” by Elizabeth Lorbeer and Nicole Mitchell, I would have thought for sure “The Worst of Times.”  It said “Many of today’s library users no longer prefer the traditional print textbook.”  Uh, oh.  As a medical book distributor, it might sound like a death sentence, but in reality it is just something we need to accept and adapt to, which is why we partnered with ebrary and continue to redefine our role as not just a distributor of books, but of information, no matter what the format. 

 

If you don’t already subscribe to Against the Grain, I would highly recommend it. The November issue is focused on trends in health science and biomedical sciences content. There are some great articles in this issue like “Trends in Consumers’ Health Information Needs and Expectations” by Patricia Pinkowski, “eBooks in Health Sciences Circa 2008—What Have We Got for Our Journey Now?” by Meg White, the article mentioned in the first paragraph and “Preparing to Honor the Past in the Future: Collection Development in the History of the Health Sciences.”

 

We attended a lot of sessions during the conference, but I will only highlight on a few…

 

The first day of the conference started with Pat Schroeder (President & CEO, Association of American Publishers) discussing “News from the Publishing World.”  The main news of the day was the Google Settlement.  She said it was the most complicated lawsuit she has ever seen.  I can understand why since the authors filed a class action suit and the publishers filed a copyright suit.  It is an incredible project that opens up 7 million books to the public. 

 

I always look forward to the Health Science Lively Lunch and this year was no different.  The session was titled “eBook Intelligence: the 8^th Annual Health Sciences Lively Lunch.”  As the program abstract states “the session will examine various facets of eBooks and eBook acquisition and collection management specifically for health sciences librarians.  We heard from a publisher (American Psychiatric Publishing), acquisitions librarian (Deborah Ruck), and a Licensing/Contract specialist who is a librarian and attorney (Sandra Wenner). 

 

Pam Harley from the APP spoke first.  I loved the fact that she commented on why there is a lack of “top tier” titles available as ebooks and/or why the publishers take so long to make them available as ebooks once the print becomes available.  A couple of the reasons I wrote down said 1. that fact is not universally true, 2. the title might be a course adoption title.  That is so true.  As a medical book distributor and reseller to bookstores, we are very familiar with the term “course adoption.”  This is a publisher’s bread and butter.  They have people dedicated to meeting with instructors to try to get them to adopt their title for their course.  If it was available as an ebook right away, why would they need to buy the print?  As Pam matter of factly stated “digital pennies don’t add up to print dollars.” 

 

Deborah Ruck from MCW was next to speak about ebooks from a collection development standpoint.  She stated that they have 9 collections of ebook and print usage continues to drop.  Her biggest gripe about ebooks is that usage statistics are not uniform.  You can’t use your own system like with print, you have to go into each ebook resource. Maybe with the developments of SUSHI , Deborah won’t have to do that for much longer. 

 

Sandra Wenner from Rush University spoke about contracting and licensing of ebooks.  The main thing I remember her saying is give yourself enough time to read the contract then reread it and read it again.  Make sure you ask all your questions before you sign the contract and don’t be afraid to ask for changes.  She had a great handout of resources on the subject along with a licensing checklist. 

 

Someone spoke up at the discussion end of the session and said there is a need for a Books in Print of ebooks.  Wouldn’t that be great?  You don’t really need Books in Print anymore because of the Internet, but I don’t think you could say the same for ebooks.  It would be nice to have a searchable list of all the ebooks available from all the different publishers and aggregators. 

 

My other favorite session was “Expanding the Ebooks Buying Experience: Approval Plans.”  This is something we want to do with our ebrary titles soon, so I was interested to hear how others are doing with it.  The general consensus was that it was going well.  It was helping them streamline the process for acquisition and availability of ebooks so they could expend money quickly and focus on specific subject areas.  The problems were the platforms, DRM, duplication, scope and MARC records.  They also felt there were not enough relevant titles b/c only single user available, they liked their vendor’s slips, and liked that they could buy title by title instead of collection of ebooks.  Another library made the step because of further mainstreaming and acceptance of ebooks, embedded discovery, return on investment and collecting to own.  A challenge was knowing the availability of both the print and ebook at point of initial decision. 

 

The vendor for both the universities discussed some considerations.  For example, are you buying on Format (P or E) or both?  Are you focusing on specific subject areas (humanities, science) or other formats such as pictorial works, reference works, collection of essays.  Some issues with the ebook in approval plans is the timing of the P versus E, price of P versus E and how to deliver ebooks: aggregator or publisher direct, one or multiple aggregators. 

 

These are all things that we will be considering when we start to integrate ebooks into our approval plans.  We will also discuss with each of our approval plan customers how/if they would like to move forward with this. 

 

As usual, I came back from the conference fired up, energized and ready to report and integrate what I learned.  Then, I opened my inbox and two weeks later, here we are.  I am excited about ebooks and our partnership with ebrary.  I heard a lot of griping about the cost of ebooks and why are they so much more than the print?  The main thing is, it isn’t the print.  You are getting so much more.  I think you have to look at ebooks and pick an aggregator the same way you do your health sciences vendor.  What can they do for me?  We all sell the same thing, but it is our services and what we do with that product that makes us different and better.