Publications / Miles Conrad Lectures

2005 Miles Conrad Memorial Lecture
47th NFAIS Annual Conference
February 28, 2005

What it Takes to Gain “Mindshare” from the Perspective of Academic Librarians.

James P. McGinty
Vice Chairman, Cambridge Information Group

Powerpoint Slides Accessible Here

I am honored, humbled and a little anxious about accepting this award. There are three former Miles Conrad Lecturers present in the room to add to that nervousness, and I would like to recognize them: John Regazzi, Kurt Molholm and Georg Schultheiss.

Today I am going to brief you on the current environment within academic libraries. But before I begin, I want to tell you a little bit about myself and about the Cambridge Information Group.

When I was a young man, about to leave home and head south to Washington, DC to begin employment with Dun & Bradstreet, my parents threw a small reception for me in our home in Brooklyn. They invited all the relatives (7 aunts, 35 cousins, and many others). My Aunt Eloise, (actually Sister Eloise, who at the time was registrar and later Dean of Misericordia College near here in Dallas, Pennsylvania), rose and spoke eloquently about me. She described me as an upwardly mobile Irishman about to climb the corporate ladder and, most importantly, I was about to leave Brooklyn. She was the maven and the matriarch of the family, and she really wanted me out of Brooklyn. After she spoke, my uncle Joe was across the room quicker than a blog goes across the Internet. He had been a coal miner, also from Pennsylvania (Wilkes-Barre), and after surviving two coal disasters in the 1930’s thought he’d better leave that profession. He came down to New York City, became a transit worker, and drove subways for 44 years. He was one tough guy! He put his arm around my neck in a loving embrace, squeezed as hard as he could and he said, “Look, you upwardly mobile Irishman - I don’t know about this corporate ladder you’re going to climb, but if you get to the top of the ladder and they say nice things about you, then you better be sure and tell them you’re from Brooklyn. Born, bred and educated in Brooklyn, too, and if you don’t do that I’m gonna come up out of me grave and break your neck.” Whoa! What a humbling experience! I now have a bad knee and I have a theory about it. It is a reminder from God that Uncle Joe is around and about and that he could easily come back and break my neck, my knee, my leg, whatever he wants. So, in deference to my uncle, I have always said that I was born, bred and educated in Brooklyn - and I am actually quite proud of my roots. I met my wife and married in Brooklyn as well.

 During my career I have worked for fantastic institutions, and I am still working for one of them. I worked for the United States Marine Corps. I worked for Dun and Bradstreet Corporation for twenty-one years. I worked for Cambridge Scientific Abstracts (now CSA). And now I work for the Cambridge Information Group - CSA’s parent. I have achieved a modicum of success in those organizations, and I asked myself why. Of course, one of the obvious answers is that I had great people working for me - an absolute essential for success. Today, I still have some terrific people supporting me, and many of them are sitting in the audience. But there was something else that contributed to my success, and it is an aspect of success that rarely gets mentioned. I had a string of spectacular bosses - including my current boss, Bob Snyder. He and I go back quite a while, and he is just the greatest quality guy. But in the Marine Corps and at D&B, I also had a string of excellent bosses. Perhaps one of the takeaways from my presentation should be that while we tend to think of the people who work for us as key to our success, we should remember that current and past bosses have contributed to who and where we are today. Never forget that being a good boss is also part of the game, and that is a responsibility that we all must fulfill.

I want to mention that the Cambridge Information Group (CIG) is a privately owned group of companies in information services, bibliographic publishing and education. Its operating companies include RR Bowker, publisher of Books in Print and provider of bibliographic data and services to the libraries, publishers, and retailers worldwide, and CSA, a publisher of bibliographic databases and print journals used by research institutions. CIG also owns the Sotheby's Institute of Art, London, and is a partner in RefWorks, the Web-based bibliographic management service. With the possible exception of Sotheby’s, all of those companies - just like everyone else in the room - are in the business of making people more effective through the use of information. That’s our “shtick” as they say back in Brooklyn. That’s what we all do. It doesn’t matter whether if we are part of a large corporation or if we work as a lone consultant. We are in the business of making people more effective through the use of information.

Objective

As I stated earlier, the focus of my presentation is on the academic library. Why is that? Well, if you have caught a thread of what is going on in the world today, you know that we as information providers are very much dependent upon academic librarians. They not only lease, use and “market” our services, but they also provide training on those services to the four million Internet barbarians who descend upon their campuses each year. These barbarians come in as freshmen with their own mindsets and their own paths for accessing and retrieving information. If you believe as I do that there are both proper and improper ways to do digital research, then you must realize that the academic librarian has the onerous responsibility of teaching the correct and most effective methods of digital research. Whether or not a student wants to learn that method is a different story, but there is a right way to do digital research and teaching the correct method is one of a librarian’s many tasks. Faculty members also have a responsibility in this area, and I will discuss their role later in my presentation.

So in teaching the correct methods and most appropriate resources for scholarly research, academic librarians play an integral role in the success of our business. And we as an industry probably spend in the order of tens of millions of dollars communicating to them. We have sales forces - in some cases very large sales forces - that regularly travel to visit with librarians. But rarely do we ask how effective and successful we are in this essential communication process. This is what I want to talk about here today - what do academic librarians actually think about our communication with them? I am going to brief you on the findings of a survey that was commissioned (refer to the credits at the end of this article) in order to learn the answer to that specific question, with the major objectives being to:

• Determine what issues are of concern to academic librarians
• Determine how they prefer to learn about new products and services
• Evaluate their perceptions of the information industry’s sales and marketing initiatives
• Learn how the communication process can be improved

The survey was approached from the sales and marketing perspective. Indeed, a lot of the results are food for thought for information sales and marketing executives, and certainly for the general managers of the world. I have been a salesman for many, many years and it is a cold, hard job. I want everyone to understand the environment in which sales reps operate when they do call on academic librarians.

Methodology

I contacted a group of librarians in North America and Europe, telling them that I was giving an award speech at the 2005 NFAIS Annual Conference, and requesting their input. They welcomed the opportunity to provide feedback to information providers, and they delivered in spades! I want to point out that the survey was not extended to Asia due to the lack of a reliable list of e-mail addresses for librarians, and that we plan to extend the survey into that geographic area in the future.

Approximately 24 librarians were interviewed in person in January 2005. Another 170 – 180 librarians provided input using an online survey application, SurveyMonkey [http://www.surveymonkey.com/]. The survey was structured by presenting a statement in a sentence or paragraph, followed by 6-8 questions about that statement, using just a checkbox. For example, “Is this issue extremely important?” or “Do you agree strongly with this statement?” The objective was to keep the amount of time required to complete the survey at a minimum.

It is important to note that there are a few caveats with online surveys. The results are representative, but not projectable; it is difficult to provide clarifications in the absence of an interview process; the results are representative of the individual respondents; and results may vary significantly by respondent class. However, the results of any research survey will vary significantly by sector and segment, and I will talk about that as we go along.

Response Rate

Responses from both Europe and North America came from representatives of four major library job classifications: head librarians, acquisitions/systems/serials librarians, reference librarians and subject specialists. The response rate was close to 20% in North America, and almost 40% of the respondents from North America were head librarians. The response rate from head librarians dropped to about 30% in Europe. Overall, there was an excellent spread across the four segments in terms of the survey responses, but the results were heavily weighted be the number of head librarians.

There was also an excellent mix of responses based upon organization size, particularly in North America where 32% of the respondents came from large college and universities, 28% from intermediate sized campuses, and 40% from small academic environments. The European response mix is different. Due to the fact that there are very few colleges and universities with under 3,000 full-time equivalent students, the responses were skewed to the high end, with 73% of the respondents being from large academic institutions.

Results

What did we really find out? We discovered that librarians are really having a good time. To use their exact phrase, the “atmosphere is exhilarating.” However, they are also stressed. There is simply not enough time to devote to students, and in Europe that seems to be the prevailing thought of almost 70% of the respondents. In North America, it does not appear to be quite as bad, but still 40% agree strongly with the fact that there is not enough time to handle student requests. I thought that two of the most interesting facts here are that 60-65% of the European librarians who responded believe that the Internet has improved the standards of scholarship, while only 40% of the North American respondents agree. Also, almost 90% of both groups believe that digital resources have improved reference desk productivity. Lots of good things are happening, but it is clearly apparent that there is an equal amount of anxiety.

Importance of Faculty

The personal interviews strongly indicated that librarians rely heavily upon faculty as their key partner in support of digital research. Faculty members are an essential factor in driving students to perform digital research. An amazing 90-95% of librarians from both Europe and North America hold that opinion, although Europeans seem to believe it a bit more. Information providers need to keep in mind that a “troika” of faculty, librarians and information providers would be an ideal team for driving new product development. Bottom line, anyone involved in product development or sales may want to pay a whole lot more attention to the faculty.

Importance of Outreach

Library outreach within the context of this survey refers to all of the activities through which librarians promote the library, their services and themselves to students and faculty within the confines of their institution. Less than 50% of librarians in North America are satisfied with their outreach activities. Europeans are only slightly more satisfied at about 60%. In fact, both groups (at about 75%) agreed that in the coming year their outreach activities will be even more time-consuming. Once again, anyone in the business of either new product development or sales management must recognize that librarians will be spending a tremendous amount of time marketing their services and capabilities within their universe. They will be busy, preoccupied with their responsibilities - and stressed. But if your products and services (or new versions thereof) can help them in their outreach efforts within their universities - then your visit will most welcome!

Key Information Industry Issues

Again from some of the interviews conducted early in the survey process, we learned that there are three dominant information industry issues of concern to librarians: Open Access, Institutional Archiving, and Google Scholar.

It was discovered, not surprisingly, that open access is a fait accompli, and that the overwhelming majority of librarians surveyed believe that it will have a positive impact on their roles and their institutions. They love it! The open access movement can be likened to a rapidly moving freight train and is a topic for a completely separate lecture. Institutional archiving is viewed as having slightly less of a positive impact - perhaps due to the many unresolved issues surrounding it. However, librarians do not perceive institutional archiving as having a negative impact, and I personally believe that it is more of an issue for large schools. For the smaller schools, institutional archiving has not yet become a big deal.

Google Scholar had just been launched a few weeks before the survey was taken. The survey results are interesting because they show that within a very short time after Google Scholar’s release the majority of respondents already believed that this new service would have a positive impact on their jobs in 2005. In contrast, there were a significant number that believed that Google Scholar would have no impact or a negative impact. Some interesting quotes related to Google are:

• Don’t Googleize your interface. That’s dumbing down.
• Quit forcing default search screens to emulate Google.
• Google is here and it’s leading the way. Pay attention to the thousands of students using it and learn.

In any event, the initial response to Google Scholar is very much a mixed bag. Some librarians welcome it and others don’t perceive it quite so favorably. But as mentioned earlier, this survey was taken shortly after the service was launched, and opinions may have shifted during the intervening period.
 

When Sources for New Product Awareness

In attempting to measure the “success’ of our communication with librarians, I wanted to determine the importance of that communication in disseminating information with regard to new products and services. Actually, I want to read the question so you will get the right wording and fully understand the impact of the responses.

“Please indicate how important each of the following sources is for you personally in learning about new information products and services.”

And what was discovered was rather astounding from my perspective. We found that 99% of the North American librarians who responded consider consortia to be extremely important as a channel for learning about new products and services. I know consortia. I’ve briefed consortia many times, and I have been a friend of consortia many times. However, I would not have thought consortia to be the single most important method - by far - for alerting librarians to the availability of new products. In fact, this can present a bit of a problem because many products and services simply do not lend themselves as consortia offerings. Also, I must admit that I dislike having a third-party as the primary source of information on my products. Not good news - but it is news. Thus, it is important that information providers perceive consortia not only as customers, but also as marketing partners who can be relied upon to provide information about new products and services to their customers. Obviously, librarians believe that this is important role for consortia.

Peer discussions are also very high in the pecking order (94% view their peers as an important source of information on new products), but most information providers already knew that. What is a big deal is the courtesy trial service. Most information providers do offer trials prior to purchase, but I was unaware of the importance of this service to librarians (92% of North American librarians believe that the trial service is important!). Therefore, anyone involved in new product development or in sales management must include trial programs as part of the promotion and sales process. And note that trials are not usually measured in weeks; indeed, they can last four to six months, and this lapsed time must be reflected in sales projections and in promotional lead times.

Trade shows and conferences - all very important to 80% of the respondents, as are product brochures. In-person visits by sales representatives are also perceived as valuable, but less so than I would have thought. Remember - the survey question under discussion is how do librarians find out about new products and services. In the personal interviews, we heard that librarians only want to see sales executives when they have something new to tell them. So personal visits scored a little lower on the scale of importance than I thought and I will reinforce this point later.

A similar pattern of responses was received from the European survey. In Europe, there appears to be a slightly higher emphasis on courtesy trials (96%), and a little less reliance on consortia (92%), although the latter may be due to the fact that consortia evolved much earlier in North America. Nonetheless, the importance of these two sources remains quite significant. The International Coalition of Library Consortia (ICOLC) will be pleased to hear that.

New Product Awareness via Vendor Initiatives

Librarians were asked what were their most and least favorite vendor initiatives with regard to learning about new products. Responses were quite mixed. Almost 30% of the respondents said that they want to learn about new products via an in-person visit, yet a not insignificant 18% said that this was their least desired method. As was noted above, while librarians do value an in-person visit, other information sources are perceived as preferable. In fact, many librarians would prefer not to hear from sales representatives at all, and considering the time constraints under which librarians work, such an attitude is understandable. Hence, it is very important to strategize visits in advance in order to transform a “sales” visit into one focused on “problem solving.”

Time constraints may be the driving force behind 22% of the respondents preferring the ability to use a PC/web demonstration at their convenience. To the contrary, 15% are saying that this is their least favored method. Definitely no consensus on this issue! Trade shows did not appear to be as important as we might have thought, but when analyzing the responses by job type it was discovered that trade shows are very important to head librarians from large institutions.

Telemarketing is overwhelmingly the least favored method by which librarians learn about new products. One in three librarians say that they definitely do not want to hear about new products on the telephone. Corporate executives, sales managers - listen up! That telephone is only to be used to make appointments. Please, no spiel over the phone. Librarians definitely do not like that.

Relative Importance of Vendor Services

The survey results indicate that a vendor’s technical/service support is important, with almost 90% of the respondents giving this opinion (figure 5). Indeed, service and technical support widely outranked all other vendor services except for courtesy free trials. Both are important, but the technical support is the most important - number one. So product developers and product managers, listen and learn: if a new product is introduced without the necessary support infrastructure, it is doomed! Without the expected and requisite support, a new product will face an uphill battle from day one.

70% of the respondents want in-house training - amazing! Only a few years ago information providers could release a new product and training would not be a major issue. But today products are so feature-rich (a euphemism for complicated) that training is demanded. Librarians are looking for more - not less. This level of service may prove to be problematic for a number of providers.

90% of the respondents said that visits from senior management were not very important at all. I don’t know why that would be. I’m a nice guy. But perhaps such visits are often of a more social nature and involve little discussion of substantive issues.

Sales Representative Competencies

The North American survey responses highlighted the core competencies that librarians expect in the sales representatives that visit them:

• The ability to clearly explain product content
• The ability to flexibly and efficiently use the time available
• An understanding of the specific library environment, its functions, and the ability to clearly articulate how a product “fits” that environment
• An understanding of the technical aspects of the product under discussion

When asked if there has been any perceived change in these competencies over the years, the responses indicate that there has been an improvement in the ability to explain product content. This core competency also has shown the least amount of deterioration. Understanding the technical aspects of a product is the competency that has shown the second highest amount of improvement, yet it is also the one with the greatest deterioration – no clear answer there. Perhaps as information services have become more feature-reach, which, as noted earlier, is another way of saying “more complicated,” sales representatives have not kept pace with their own skill set, and therefore are less able to satisfactorily answer questions raised by their customers. They may respond by saying “Oh, well, the techs take care of that issue.” Or “I’ll give you the card of the technical guy.” Well, no one - and a librarian least of all - wants to be on the receiving end of such a response. An immediate straight answer from the sales executive is expected. The message from librarians is very clear: “Representative need to be less-sales focused and display much more knowledge of their products.” Therefore, the information provider representatives who visit librarians must be very comfortable with the technical environment of their product - and that of the library as well.

Differences Between North American & European Librarians

In reviewing the survey responses, differences were noted in certain areas. First, there were noticeable differences between the European and North American librarians on certain issues. The Europeans believe much more strongly than their North American counterparts that formal accredited courses in library skills should be mandatory (60% vs. 35%). They also believe more strongly that faculty support of the library is key to its success (75% vs. 55%); that digital resources increase reference desk productivity (50% vs. 42%); and that the understanding of the library environment among sales representatives has improved (35% vs. 22%). On the other hand, North American Librarians believe more strongly than their European counterparts in the importance of courtesy trials (70% vs. 48%) and consortia (75% vs. 55%) in learning about new product offerings.

Response Differences Based Upon Organization Size

In North America the responses based upon the size of the respondent’s institution were quite different. Librarians associated with large schools placed a higher value on personal  visits by sales reps than their counterparts in smaller institutions (70% vs. 55%). I find that rather interesting, as I would have thought the opposite to be true. Significant differences exist between the very large and very small schools. In large schools, collection review meetings are extraordinarily important as a source of learning about new products (95%). But among small schools, only 55% of the respondents find them of value. Perhaps this difference is due to the size of staff. A small school may have a head librarian and a few others and a small group may not need formal meetings for communication purposes, whereas large, geographically dispersed institutions may rely on meetings for just that purpose. Another difference between large and small institutions is that librarians from large academic environments see a need for mandatory courses in library skills (75%), while only 55% of the respondents from small schools agree.

As noted earlier, in small academic environments institutional archiving is unimportant, but in large schools it is very important. No vendors, with the possible exception of ProQuest, have taken any steps to deal with this issue, and the large libraries are waiting for it to be addressed.

Response Differences Based Upon Seniority/Responsibility

Responses also vary based upon the respondent’s role within the library environment.

Head librarians (50%) believe that digital resources have increased reference desk productivity, while only 30% of subject librarians agree. On the other hand subject librarians (30%) strongly agree that there is insufficient time to devote to students, while only 15% of head librarians agree.

40% of head librarians believe that trade shows are extremely important, while less than 25% of subject librarians and less than 20% of reference librarians agree. Perhaps this is due to the fact that only head librarians actually have the funds to attend trade shows.

While all three groups - head librarians, reference librarians and subject specialists - agree on the importance of in-person visits by sales representatives and in-house training, it is the subject librarians who feel the strongest about one-on-one communication with another human being, particularly when it comes to learning about new products. Head librarians think it is important (20%), but it is the subject librarians (40%) who really want it. Sales executives may want to think before scheduling that meeting with the head librarian, because the subject librarian will be twice as receptive to their visit!

Open Commentary

The survey included one open-ended question: “What message would you give to NFAIS attendees?”

More than four typewritten pages of responses were received from 50 of the respondents, and their messages fall into four categories:

• Budgets and economics
• Interfaces and product capabilities
• Communication and sales issues
• Industry issues

Some of the comments are very interesting and pertinent. For example,

“Using trusted sources, such as Abstracting & Indexing (A&I) products, with
strong content guidelines, is one way for scholarship to develop alongside of
information-gathering skills. We need high-quality A&I sources to help students understand that not everything on the Web is equal and that some valuable resources may not be available electronically.”

So there are some believers out there.

Here is another good one.

“An integrated online environment with Google and research databases,
interlinked and interchangeable is what librarians see as their future goal.
This may be at variance with a company’s need for a proprietary
competitive advantage, but it is exciting to watch the new environment unfold.”

This is from someone who is saying: “I accept the search engines and I accept proprietary data, but I want them together. I want them integrated.”

One final comment to ponder:

“Getting students and faculty to recognize and use non-full text sources is becoming a major, and perhaps lost, battle.”

What Did We Learn?

In summary, the survey responses revealed that academic librarians:

• Are approachable, but extraordinarily time-sensitive
• Are focused, process-oriented, and well-educated consumers
• Are very sensitive to services
• React differently according to their role in the library and size of their institution
• Operate in a stressed environment due to all the new product innovations
• Expect and appreciate competency

In addition, the following facts about the academic library environment unfolded:

• Outreach activities for the marketing of library services are very important
• Institutional archiving in an electronic environment is a major issue, particularly for large libraries
• Faculty involvement is perceived to be crucial to a library’s success
• Faculty should be considered when designing sales campaigns
• The triumvirate of faculty, librarian and information provider can be a powerful combination for the design and development of new products and services
• Consortia are important communication channels through which new product information is disseminated
• Sales representatives are important, but 25% of the customer base does not want to see them

And we learned that sales representatives should not visit academic librarians unless they are competent and extraordinarily well prepared. They must be able to meet the expectations of the librarian and of the library environment - and they must understand that environment.

And finally, we learned that we can never, never know enough about our customers.

Additional Credits:

David Ogilvie, an information industry consultant, developed the survey and served as principal researcher on this project. He designed a three-and-a-half page questionnaire that generated thirty-five pages of cross tabulation. David also assisted with the response analysis.

 Simon Inger, a principal of Scholarly Information Strategies  in the U.K, assisted with the European segment of the survey on a complimentary basis, dedicating his efforts to NFAIS. The entire project was made possible with funding and staff support provided by CIG Chairman, Mr. Robert Snyder, and the Cambridge Information Group.

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