Due to several requests, here are the responses that I received to my question about Svengalis's "write for order" plan. I first include my original message and then the responses that I received. Names are omitted (except Svengalis's) to protect the innocent. ;-) Thanks for everyone's help! As you can tell, I have a lot of input to process.
Seth Ben-Ezra
Librarian
Knox, McLaughlin, Gornall & Sennett, P.C.
Erie, PA
http://www.kmgslaw.com
Phone (814) 459-2800
Fax (814) 453-4530
All opinions expressed are my own and most definitely not my employer's.
In fact, if they knew what I was saying.... ;-)
<insert other applicable disclaimer clauses here>
===============
Begin summary
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Good morning, fellow law-libbers (and good afternoon, to those of you joining us from the other side of the Atlantic). Once again budget issues are raising their ugly heads, and I am endeavoring to beat them down with the mallet of cost-effectiveness. Alas, nearly all the easy targets for cancellation have been eliminated, leaving me with the task of paring down costs in other ways. One method that leaped to mind was suggested by Ken Svengalis in his Legal Information Buyer's Guide and Reference Manual. This is the infamous suggestion of refusing supplementation to secondary sources and opting to buy a new set every 2-3 years to keep costs down. I am considering recommending this approach to the powers-that-be, but I thought that I would solicit feedback from my peers.
So, has anyone out there in law-lib land tried this method? Did it work well? Any pitfalls that I should know about? Email me off-list, please. I will summarize if there is interest.
Thanks in advance.
Seth Ben-Ezra
=====
We have recently been doing this on some titles. The major drawback is what
to do with the old sets when you buy a new one - we will try and sell them ,
but will probably end up dumping a lot of them especially if they are really
old.
=====
the "write for order" system did work well with Bender pubs....also WGL,
pre-merger mania. Then when WGL put titles on "annual service", you couldn't
refuse interim supps. I wonder if the WFO system is still even available! or
if one must stamp feet and scream. I'm copying Ken to see if he should have
insight on that factoid.
=====
My suggestion with WG&L, given their switch to annual service, is to simply
subscribe in alternate years (or less often, if appropriate). Subscribing in
alternate years reduces the supplementation cost by 50% and gives you annual
updating. The same holds true with most secondary sources with cumulative
supplementation. We all know how little new material is in these annual
cumulative supplements and how we're paying for most of the same information
over and over again. If supplementation for a specific title becomes critical,
you can always have them sent via next day mail or ask colleagues on law-lib to
check the current supplement.
This problem will continue to plague us all as supplementation costs rise
10-15% per year for many of these publications at a time when our budgets rise,
perhaps, 5%. We are all re-evaluating our collections in light of rising
costs. For example, we once subscribed to all of the state digests in the N.E.
region. In the past year, we dropped the Indiana, Ohio and Illinois Digests
due to high supplementation costs. On the question of secondary sources, we
really have just two choices: shrink the number of titles in our collections
for which we maintain standing orders, or keep those titles on the shelves but
establish a cyclical program of supplementation. I have always believed that
having the base title on the shelf is better than not having it at all. The
issue of supplementation can be dealt with on a case by case basis.
Ken Svengalis
=====
Seth,
Be happy it has taken you awhile to reach this point. We have been
basically doing this for a couple of years now. At our library sources like
Am Jur and Words and Phrases only get updated every 2 to 3 years (of course
we purchase all new volumes as issued). The same goes with some of our
other seldom used treatises and indexes. Some of the publications that now
update 2 to 3 times a year we only update once a year. So far it has worked
out ok (knock on wood).
=====
Seth - I did this in the early 90s with my Matthew Bender publications and
it worked very well. It requires careful recordkeeping on your part (the
publisher won't help you...) and I did it on a two-year cycle, repurchasing
a quarter of the titles every six months to keep the cash flow thing going.
The only caution is that you can only realize the savings once so pick a
year when you really want/need to show some improvement on your bottom line.
If you do this in 2002, you won't be able to show great savings in 2003 or
2004, etc. My $.02. Good luck!
=====
Yes, corporate law libraries do this. Selectively, not a blanket policy.
Of course, their use isn't as heavy as in a law firm. Some publishers have
automatic systems in place so that only the 2nd cumulative supplement in a
year will be sent at your request. Other publishers want nothing to do with
such a program but your rep might volunteer to watch for the bound volume
and send it to you if you cancel the paper parts in a subscription.
Carswell here in Canada and therefore possibly West, effectively block such
purchasing ideas by keeping the cost of the item very high no matter how you
buy it. Simple and effective!
Keeping track of when to update becomes labour intensive as you have to
build reminders into your calendar, and its annoying to spend time on it
after a few years. However, you will be surprised at what you can do
without, which is what management loves to have you discover. The other
thing is that you can quietly drop or scale-back the policy after you've
made the initial splash.
=====
We are also dealing with the same ridiculous budget issues ....makes me
think there was just an article in some Legal Administrators journal
about cutting out your library budget!
If it gets much worse, I told my admin. that I am going to put Slurpee,
Lemon Blennd, cappuccino and popcorn machines next to my desk to raise
funds!
We have been forced to do the Svengalis thing and honestly, it works
pretty well, especially if you have access to a public law library that
has the current editions. Most attys seem to feel that something (even
if it's old) is better than nothing. Of course, you have to find a
blatantly obvious way to let the attys know what's out of date.
Good luck! I think we are almost all in the same boat. I just wish
the powers that be would take my advice and stop paying FIRST YEARS
$120,000! That would solve all kinds of problems :-)
=====
We did not keep the annual supplementation to Sutherland on Statutory Construction; in fact we have not updated it since 1999. What you really need is the discussion in the main volume on the substance; the pocket part updates were primarily new cases, and really, how often does the substantive law of statutory construction change in a major way? Case updates can be undertaken on Westlaw. I marked the volume spines as "not updated since 1999". I will be ordering pocket parts this year.
Also, the annual cumulative supplement volume to Davis, Administrative Law Treatise became rather expensive (about $475.00). Since each volume cumulates all the additions since the main volumes were published, it is sufficient to get the supplement every other year.
Obviously, if the secondary source relates to a core area of your practice or is in an area where the law changes frequently (such as pensions or tax), you really should keep the annual supplementation. Hope this helps.
=====
Seth,
Experiencing budget shortfalls, we have been using Ken's suggestions for the last 3-4 years. I did make cuts in certain series, planning to buy new (well, new "used") sets in 3-4 years. Unfortunately, with the way out revenue continues to fall and prices continue to soar, we now are really not able to justify buying new sets. Every now and then I see sets for sale on the list serve, but they are no more current than ours. So, a word of warning, before you cut, you need to either be ready to let the "delected" go for good or have a secure funding source to purchase another set in a few years. And if you have a secure funding source, please let me in on it, because all of our sources have dried up in the last year or so.
Sorry to be so negative. Too many bills from West, I guess. One note: whenever I *do* cut something, I make sure that the information can be found somewhere else in our collection. Please summarize your responses for the list.
=====
Seth,
Please summarize responses for the list.
I, too, am facing the task of cutting back my expenses. And, I have had to
do every year for the past three years.
I have tried various things, such as ranking all the titles we have on
standing order and no longer updating those with low rankings -- unless
there is a special need for them. If there is we will update it, once, and
consider changing its rank. I cancelled second copies of titles.
I am working on a spreadsheet that tracks the price increases on a sample of
titles over the last four fiscal years. I am also working on a spreadsheet
that shows the number of volumes issued per year for a particular set. I
can show, for example, that not only has the price of the Federal Supplement
increased from $50.25 last year to $55, but the number of volumes per year
has increased as well. All this in preparation for asking for a sizeable
increase in my book budget this year.
Sorry if I rambled!
=====
We used this strategy quite successfully with one of our titles, Customs
Law and Administration. Online resourcess easily updated the material. We
found that we could get away without purchasing a new set for two years
unless there was significant legislation.
=====
As a State judicial law library, we've been dropping supplements (even to
the point of refusing the x-month "freebies - for several reasons, including
insufficient staff to file them and the fact that when the "freebies"
expire, the vendors automatically renew the supplements and the hairshirt
syndrome recurs) and repurchasing the sets every few years. This doesn't
seem to upset the users; and if one needs to find out if a particular entry
is current (rare), we call a library that does maintain supplements.
Obviously, this is not a good idea for heavily used sets that support a
significant revenue-producing area of practice that requires absolute
currency (i.e., some of the tax and labor publications).
If you do decide to go this route, a few suggestions:
- Place your orders for replacement sets so that they arrive at
conveniently spaced intervals. Otherwise, you may wind up (as we did) with
60 LARGE boxes arriving at the same time. This is not pleasant, unless
you've the staff to handle this sort of thing. (And quite often the sets
are are not together - one box may have several volumes of several sets,
with the result that it may take some time to determine whether you've
received complete sets.) Spaced ordering one way of having a fair shot at
getting a complete set in one shipment.
- "Back-orders" seem to be more common: in one instance it took over a year
to receive a missing volume. As you've probable learned, repeat calling
does pay off, and West in particular cuts its printing runs very close.
Which leads to -
- Don't pay for a set until you've received every single item - including
pocket parts. Then check to be sure the straggler matches the last release
of the previously-received volumes. If not, then the fun begins.
If you have any questions, let me know. Good luck!
=====
Seth--
I've not actually tried it, but I've gotten so far behind in filing that for
all practical intents and purposes I've done it.
I think this approach makes sense for those areas where you have other ways
to quickly update the info provided in the set, or areas the law changes
slowly--i.e. Federal Tort Claims, or even Attorney's Dictionary of Medicine.
The fact that we've discussed it on law-lib gives it validity, and by
showing cost of supplementation vs. cost of new subscription provides
concrete evidence of how the publishers are pricing themselves out of their
own market. Another point to consider: time spent filing the updates.
=====Many years ago (approximately 1986) when I was a practicing attorney at one
of the more infamous firms in Oklahoma, part of my job duties included
monitoring library acquisitions. At that time I made the decision to stop
supplementation of secondary sources. When the Matthew Bender salesman
called on me and reviewed our account, I told him up front that I did not
intend to update the sources and planned to simply purchase replacement
volumes about every 3 years. I told him that the cost of inserting the
updates simply did not justify the cost of receiving them, particularly when
the sources were primarily used as a starting point for research, not and
end point. Couple that with the high cost of the supplementation and it was
simply far more efficient to purchase a new set every few years.
His response was rather candid. He told me that I was certainly in good
company doing that as several law schools, including the University of
Oklahoma, adopted the same approach.
The downside is that with more and more publishers discovering they can
license products rather than simply selling them, they may discover they can
provide the materials on the condition that when you stop paying for the
license, your right to continue to use the product terminates, and you are
obligated to return the hard copies. I haven't seen any cases interpreting
this kind of license insofar as it pertains to books or loose-leaf services,
but I suppose it is only a matter of time until we do.
=====
Seth,
I've been doing that for years with Aspen's "Almanac of the Federal Judiciary", Vols 1 & 2.
They "supplement" (read "replace entirely") that thing twice a year, to the tune of over $600.00 per supplement.
My 1998-1 version sat on the shelf until I just bought a one-time "supplement" (2001-2) last fall. Up until then (because someone needed information on a newer judge) it had served everyone's needs fine.
I figure we saved approximately $3,000.00.
I haven't tried it on anything else yet, but I will if I have to. My boss (the partner who has oversight responsibility for the library) is amenable to it.
=====
I only do it for publications that became annual subscriptions when
they went from Warren Gorham to A.S. Pratt --Brady on Bank Checks and
another one (sorry, I can't remember the title!) They were books that we
only bought one supplement a year; when that option went away, we
cancelled our subscription and replace every 3 years or so.
=====
My impression is that Svengalis' write-for-order method (getting
supplements every three-to-five years instead of annually) is used by a good
many academic law libraries. We have used it to good effect in the two law
school libraries I've been associated with. That is to say, at these two
libraries I think we've saved thousands and thousands of dollars without any
harm to the integrity of our treatise collection. In addition, it has
allowed us to buy a wider variety of treatises. At my present library, I
have not had a complaint about this policy in the nearly eight years that
I've been here.
=====
Seth,
I am going to do that with some titles I added and/or updated last year. I have a very small budget so when I buy something new, I know I am not going to be able to enter into automatic supplementation or subscription. Any print source you have in your library today that is current with it's pocket parts or filing still has to be updated. Since the user will be updating for the past month, three months or year what's the difference if the date restriction is for the past 2, 3 or 4 years. You may want to mark your books, however, reminding people to update. You could even supply the search phrase on the notice(and da(aft 1/2002) or date aft 1/2002).
I have also discovered certain titles that I want updated every year and even there the cost of a new book is less than the supplementation for the one year. Legal Secretaries, Federal Litigation, James Publ and Almanac of the Federal Judiciary are two that come to mind.
=====
A word of caution. If you let a large set lapse for three to four years and then purchase just the pocket parts, you may be missing new edition replacement volumes. The cost of the pocket parts plus replacement volumes may very well exceed the cost of just replacing the entire set. It happened with one of my titles last year. While it is certainly an environmental waste to toss a 30 volume set, in the library budget, it's a savings.
=====
Excellent point - at my former firm, it was suggested that we could
supplement large sets, such as the Federal Practice Digest, every few
years. I pointed out that it wasn't just a matter of pocket parts
because volumes are replaced, and are often replaced by more than one
volume, plus a number of softcover supplements, expanding indices, etc.
Aside from cost considerations, I felt that it would be labor intensive
to have to take a checklist, every few years, and go through these sets
to find out what volumes needed to be ordered, and then have to adjust
the space to accommodate several years' worth of new volumes at one
time.
=====
Many years back before Ken even began his publication a number of us in county law libraries began doing with Matthew Bender what now is called the "write for order" or "fill up" practice. In the late eighties and early 90's I began this practice with Bender, then Aspen, and cut way back on CCH. Every three years I rotate titles. Now, we do have, and always have had since 1982 a public Westlaw terminal. We now have Westlaw and Loislaw for our bar users, so that any text can be updated, at any time.
I noticed that your firm does a fair amount of labor and worker's comp. Those are both areas with a lot of specialty publications with costly price tags and what I call a "boutique" feel. I'm willing to bet you've got partners who "prefer" Larson or whatever, and you will have the devil's own time getting them to consider giving up a title or two to relinquish to a rotation of the subscription.
My reasoning on this issue is this... Those supplements which are not only costly to buy, but are also costly to file, are at least three months old when the information gets to us, and maybe another 6 months or a year old before the volume is updated. Chances are if the attorney is using the material in the text,
she knows it is at least that old, and I often think even older. Better to use the text as a starting point and go online.
I have two thoughts to share with you. First, eliminate wherever possible duplication of titles in offices. If you can achieve that you have achieved a lot. Second,
See if you can get an opinion leader or one of the reasonable partners to be willing to "try" the rotation idea ..based on just the "shelf" costs of keeping a title.
The old percentage used to be cost plus 20% per annum, but I bet that is no longer a good figure.
In all the years we have done this, there have been no complaints, and the only down side is that you do have the processing aspect of the new stuff when it comes in. Better that, I say, than all that looseleaf filing, which we still do plenty of with a filing contractor.
good luck with your choices
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