How many times have you heard the phrase “Cut out the middle man and save money”? As consumers, we all want a better deal … and as a manufacturer (or publisher in this case), you would want the same because you could potentially earn more, have more control, and be directly connected to the consumer. In the case of conference proceedings, a highly specialized publication filled with scientific papers presented at professional meetings, the model becomes a bit more complicated.
To build a broad and deep collection of procedures, the consumer (a collection development librarian or topic librarian) has literally thousands of editors (professional society editors and scientific editors) to choose from. While it’s great to have options, the task of searching, reviewing, and acquiring procedures from so many publishers is daunting. A closer look reveals even more obstacles to overcome.
- Top-tier professional societies have paid staff and can handle inquiries and orders. However, most procedure producing societies have limited staff or are voluntarily led by engineers in academia and industry. This makes the acquisition process even more cumbersome as they are often not set up as a “for profit” business and have other priorities.
- Contacting hundreds of editors to create a collection of proceedings may not be practical, especially when most of these editors are understaffed or understaffed. Unless, of course, you have nothing better to do than googling your day looking for conference chairs and their emails or phone and fax numbers.
- Society meetings are held on different dates each year, so publication dates are uncertain.
- Some society meetings plan to publish minutes, but for a variety of reasons, publication can take months or even years, or it can be canceled altogether.
- Since minute editors are located all over the world, many editors sleep when you are awake and there may be language and currency issues.
Perhaps there are many other obstacles, but it would be safe to say that finding a good dealer could be beneficial. Better yet, finding a “specialized conference procedures company” that has a history of supplying a variety of procedures to libraries can provide the best investment.
A good distributor will be able to compile a list of titles from many publishers with pricing and availability information included. They may be able to provide more specialized services, such as handling certain recurring conference titles in standing order. They can also classify titles or editorials by subject area. For instance:
- Proceedings of the aerospace conference
- Proceedings of conferences on electricity and informatics
- Proceedings of the Chemical and Petroleum Conference
- Proceedings of the nanotechnology conference
- Proceedings of the biology and medicine conference
This can make the librarian’s job much easier. Instead of spending countless hours searching the web for titles in specific subject areas, just so you can begin the arduous task of reaching out to dozens or hundreds of publishers, imagine having new title information, sorted by publisher or by subject, delivered to you at one monthly. After browsing the list and choosing the titles you want, you can deliver the order and let them do the rest.
For the same reasons that a central market or grocery store is more convenient than driving across town to collect a variety of groceries and other staples, a good distributor of conference proceedings can be worth its weight in gold. Given the price of gold these days, that’s pretty valuable.
