Dear Community,
The new year often marks a time of change. This month, we are managing a major transition prompted by the sudden closure of Baker & Taylor, which was the primary wholesale book supplier for public libraries nationwide.
Like many other public libraries, we relied heavily on Baker & Taylor (B&T) to source materials. Not only were they our go-to vendor, but the materials we purchased came to us “shelf-ready.” That means they arrived with a catalog record already in the system, and with processing details already completed, such as mylar book jackets, barcodes, spine labels, property stamps, and more.
The good news is, we have always used multiple vendors to make our materials orders, as an intentional decision to never rely solely on B&T. This means our transition period away from B&T was not nearly as challenging as it was for some other libraries. Because we already had accounts set up with multiple vendors, we quickly shifted the bulk of our ordering to them.
B&T’s shutdown occurred in October and I’m hopeful that you haven’t noticed much of a delay in receiving your library items lately. However, we are still working through details that can cause slowdowns for new items before they hit the shelves. For example, most items are not as “shelf-ready” as they used to be, though we’re hoping our current vendors can meet our preferred standards over the next few months. On top of that, vendors are now scaling up their own infrastructure to handle the incredible surge of new customers.
The landscape is still changing and like all public libraries, we’re along for the ride. Thankfully, we’re in a good position to handle these new circumstances, and I’m optimistic that the impact to library patrons will continue to be minimal. Still, I wanted to share these behind-the-scenes details so that you can better understand some of the logistics we work through each day.
As always, I’m grateful for your support, and I’m looking forward to the year ahead with all of you.
Best,
Ashlee