according<\/a> to Publishers Weekly. The closure leaves libraries across the country without their primary book distributor.<\/p>\nLibraries in Nebraska get new books weekly, and Baker & Taylor was one of the main providers for their flow of new content for patrons to check out, but the company\u2019s impending closure was causing issues even before its announcement.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we began to notice, kind of the canary in the coal mine, was that books weren’t showing up over the last several months,\u201d Kearney Public Library director Matt Williams said. \u201cYou would order something, and it just wouldn’t show up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Williams said the library makes decisions on what to order based on new releases and community requests. Patrons can put books on hold before they even arrive at the library.<\/p>\n
Kearney Public Library is in the process of switching to a different primary distributor, Ingram, and reordering unfulfilled stock from Baker & Taylor.<\/p>\n
To determine reordering priorities, library staff will look at how many hold requests incoming titles had. Titles with the most requests will be at the top of the reordering list. But Williams suspects that it will take months to catch up on reordering.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, the stuff that people really want, we’re going to reorder them right away,\u201d Williams said.<\/p>\n
Herbert Lesser, vice president of the Midwest Library Service, a provider for academic and public libraries, said libraries are considering a range of different retailers, including Amazon. The trouble with libraries using Amazon, he said, is that its distribution is geared toward the general public, not libraries \u2013 making the ordering and stocking process even more cumbersome.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt seems that they’re simply ordering more from Amazon, and then what happens is, instead of getting consolidated shipments, they might get 20 books in 15 boxes,\u201d Lesser said. \u201cWhereas a library vendor would ship those 20 books in one box.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lesser said unpacking and breaking down additional boxes is just one example of how the transition is adding to the workload of library staff.<\/p>\n
The library services director for Midwest Library Service, Steven Chase, has been working directly with libraries throughout the Midwest to fill the gap in the meantime.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe big thing right now is for patrons to to understand what their local library is going through,\u201d Chase said. \u201cThey are doing the best they can do to get these books.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nebraska libraries could delays in getting new releases over the next few months following the abrupt closure of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":126540,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[266],"tags":[359,18,117,19,17],"class_list":{"0":"post-126539","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=126539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126539\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/126540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}