Re: Waste of our subscription dollars Jennifer Friedman 10 Jun 1995 03:31 UTC
I'm glad other people are irritated by the publishers's practices! >*My* biggest problem is with National Register Publishing, who not >only sends us "renewal" notices for items we don't have on >standing order, but who sends us *four* copies of each -- each of >the four has a slightly different permutation of our library or >college name.... (e.g., one's LRC Hearnes and one's Missouri Western >and one's MO Western.) >I'm noticing that any publishers who are lurking around are being >very quiet indeed, BTW. I work at a small library in a medical peer review organization, and I've noticed unsavory practices like this quite often. We will often get several copies of an advertisement when one would do, each with a slightly different version of our organization's name. Or we will get two invoices for an order, one right on top of the other, obviously with the hope that both will get paid. Or there is the infamous trick of making an advertisement look identical to an invoice--even going so far as to mark it, "Product Invoice"--when it is, in actuality, an advertisement or an invitation to re-subscribe years after we intentionally let a subscription lapse. A large library would, I assume, have reliable ways to check whether a subscription is current, has been paid for, etc., but I am the first librarian to work in our little library, and when I got here in January I was hard- pressed even to make a list of current subscriptions. The flood of advertisements and invitations to subscribe, as well as the invoices, got put away in a box until I could get more familiar with the collection. I'm sure glad I did, because when I went through the box recently, I only found two or three relevant letters of renewal, out of several hundred pieces of junk mail--many duplicating themselves, or using deceitful techniques to solicit orders. A small library, especially one struggling to justify its new existence, cannot afford to be duped by publishers. Unfortunately, small, newer libraries are the most vulnerable to this, because of communication and organization prob- lems, staff shortages, and poor documentation of past orders. I find deceitful advertising practices reprehensible, and if any publishers are "lurking around" out there, be warned that I have many times summarily tossed out advertisements that take advantage of these techniques. I figure that if the publisher has to resort to such practices to gain subscribers, their publication probably isn't worth the money...and I have seen sample issues that proved this assumption. Sorry this is so long. Just had to sound off. Jennifer Friedman Wisconsin Peer Review Organization Librarian 2909 Landmark Place Madison, WI 53713 jfriedmn@macc.wisc.edu //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Jennifer Friedman School of Library and Information Studies 415 W. Gilman #508 Helen C. White Hall, UW-Madison campus Madison, WI 53703 Internet: jfriedmn@macc.wisc.edu (608) 251-8917 Bitnet: jfriedmn@wiscmacc \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\