Original Content

Negotiate!

I’m going to say it: Librarians are rarely effective negotiators. Way too often we pay full prices for mediocre resources without demur. Why? First of all, most librarians are introverts and/or peaceable sorts who dislike confrontation. Second, we are unlikely to get bonuses or promotions when we save our organizations money, so there goes most of the extrinsic motivation for driving a hard bargain with vendors. Third and most importantly, we go into the library business because libraries aren’t a business. Most of us deliver government-funded public services, so we have zero profit motive, and our non-business mentality is almost a professional value in itself. But this failure to negotiate weakens our value to the communities we serve. Libraries pay providers over a billion dollars a year for digital services and resources, only to get overpriced subscriptions and comparatively shoddy products. When did you last meet a librarian who loved…