Contract Negotiations

Today, I sat in with the firm chief librarian and a procurement manager to negotiate our contract with the reps from one of the library vendors. The vendor is one of the biggest publishers out there for legal publications.

The meeting started at 10:30am and I expected to be out of the conference room by 11am so I can buy lunch from the L.A. Fire Department fundraiser. We have this fundraiser every year when they close off a block in downtown L.A. so that firemen from different stations sell meals, raffle tickets and gear to raise funds. It's like a huge block party where there are good looking firemen manning the grills and the booths :o)

Anyway, the negotiations lasted for almost two hours. The point of contention? Well, it's the issue of "Online v. Print" that plague many libraries these days. With the increase of available online information services in the market, librarians nowadays face the question of what print products could be cancelled to make way for the ourchase of online publications and services.

The vendor who for the past years had very good deals (in fact underpriced for last 3 years) on their online products felt that they have to catch up to current market adjustments. They are proposing a 100% increase on their prices and for a firm our size that means tens of thousands of dollars. The bad news is that it is a very tricky time to even propose price changes because the firm's executive director is wanting to cut the library budget by $1M and we are trying very hard to cancel titles and services that have low or no usage at all.

It was interesting to watch my boss take a stand with the negotiations. She was adamant without being too aggresive and I have to say the reps impressed me too in that they were not too pushy as most sales people are when it come to selling their products. It was like watching a fencing match where one party would thrust and the other party parries. Although I had no direct say in the negotiation, I was there to learn from the "master" and also to answer questions about invoices and usage.

With a firm of this size (we have over 700 attorneys) there is always that debate as to what should we keep in print and what are we willing to let go. The extensive legal online databases available to librarians and the users (lawyers, secretaries and paralegals) is great to have if the library has the budget for it but there still are many users out there who feel the need to have the print version available for them to check out.

We have been this vendor's custome for decades now and they are proposing that although the increase in price is fair perhaps in order to balance the budget, we can cancel some of the print materials. Our stand is that if we agree with them and their proposal, perhaps the vendor can agree to do the price increase in increments for the next three years instead of a one time increase of 100%. For example, the price difference on the online business library they offer from last year's subscription price is over $100,000.00 and that alone can break any firm's budget!

What strikes me as funny is that there was a time that I thought online searching is usually free or if there is a fee involved, it can't be that much. In the past, as a college student, I mostly just "yahooed" or "googled" out the information I needed and think that it is free, accurate and current and that it is authoritative. In the real world, I began to realize more and more that if one wants the best information out there, it will cost beaucoup bucks!