Decoding the Scholarly Resources Marketplace

Developed with input from a variety of library workers and industry representatives, this session will provide a current and concise introduction to the scholarly resource marketplace for academic libraries, highlighting the financial and functional connections between major market actors providing services and content to libraries. Discussions of vendor relations in libraries have often focused on the interpersonal collaboration of library workers and vendor representatives. In the process, they have overlooked or neglected the connections between publishers and vendors, their parent corporations and subsidiary companies. Decoding requires a focus on vocabulary and building shared understanding of the marketplace for scholarly resources. In libraries, we may use vendor names as shorthand, creating a jargon barrier which can impede understanding and efforts. To this purpose, the speakers will provide succinct and clarifying descriptions and overviews of the market actors, their market shares, and their subsidiary and parent business relationships. In this introductory session, the speakers will seek to decode and communicate the current scholarly resource marketplace, providing a practical overview to the market forces at play that should inform collection strategies and decision making