Good to see such a lively debate.
I'd better weigh in with my own view:
1. Pure supplier selection will reduce stock range and turn libraries
into poorer versions of WH Smith.
2. Creating good range and balanced stock is a skill, some of that can
be built into a stock specification, some cannot. For this reason I
favour a mixed economy, using supplier selection for the easy stuff but
nurturing librarian stock knowledge to do the rest. Keeping these skills
within libraries helps us to recruit librarians, it's also what most of
our customers think that we are about. It's much easier going out and
promoting the service if you have direct control over what's on the
shelves. Customers (and prospective customers) respect and value our
skills and knowledge.
3. Narrowing choice by pursuing volume issues is a dead end. We cannot
compete with retail and nor should we try. Libraries must have a better
vision and clearer sense of worth than that.
4. Simplistic over-use of community profiles and demand measurement
will constrict stock choice. Opening the Book's Stock Quality Health
Check only measures fiction range, no such similar measure exists for
non-fiction so pure demand will lead to a very predictable stock range.
Simon Craddock
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