Lies My Vendor Told Me | Peer to Peer Review

Barbara Fister, Gustavus Adolphus College, St. Peter, MN -- Library Journal, 8/27/2009

The legal publisher West recently kicked up a small dust storm of controversy with a marketing campaign that suggested knowing a librarian was admissible evidence that you were a helpless victim of your own ignorance and crippling dependence.

“Are you on a first name basis with the librarian?” the advertisement asks, next to a pair of nerdy women’s glasses that manages to look both disapproving and prissy, the folded frames looking like an unhappy face. “If so, chances are, you’re spending too much time at the library. What you need is fast, reliable research you can access right in your office.”

It’s hard to know where to start. I don’t think the marketers meant to suggest that having librarians among your acquaintances is socially embarrassing, but the implication is there. (First name basis? Oh, dude, not good. You should be networking with people who matter, not with the help.) Even stronger is the suggestion that if you have to ask a woman of lower social standing to help you, your professionalism is in question, if not your manhood. Why disclose your lack of research skill in public when you can flail around in the privacy of your office?

The more significant assumption in the ad is that libraries don’t provide electronic access to information, only shelves and shelves of print volumes that are too hard for lawyers to use. (Apart from the total inaccuracy of the claim, many attorneys might find being accused of incompetence offensive.)  I’m guessing the pairing of “fast” and “reliable” is there to fend off any notion that public documents that are freely available on the Internet can’t be trusted. Libraries, of course, are merely slow.

West’s library relations department distanced itself from the misguided ad, and a company official apologized and expressed sincere dismay: “I'm on a first-name basis with more librarians that I can count, and I'm proud to know every one of them.”

So strike the ad from the record. The jury is instructed to disregard it.

Repeat offenders
Though I feel for vender reps working in library relations who are caught wrong-footed because of the actions of their corporate overlords, there’s a fundamental lack of integrity in this kind of marketing, and it’s not just the content of the ad that is objectionable. West is not the only publisher that has decided to milk the market for its products twice: once by selling it to librarians and again by selling it directly to library users.

To sell to the second market, users have to be persuaded that libraries are inferior. Exhibit A: libraries are inconvenient warehouses of hard-to-use printed materials that are time-consuming and difficult to use. So what if the claim is untrue? In marketing, the rules of evidence don’t apply.

It’s bad enough when we learn from an academic department assistant that their budget is being eaten by professors ordering copies of the articles they find through Google Scholar—articles the library can provide. But making it easy to purchase articles without mentioning library options is a misdemeanor. Basing a marketing campaign on deliberate falsehoods is more serious. 

Cengage (producer of the InfoTrac suite of databases) also publishes a large number of textbooks, and one of the enticements for adopting many of those textbooks is that they come bundled with access to a wonderful database of full text articles found in peer-reviewed journals. What a deal! With purchase, you get a few months “free” access to material your library already subscribes to! The first testimonial on their website uses exactly the same misleading argument that the West advertisement does: it’s inconvenient to use a library because you have to go there, and once you’re there finding what you need there takes too long.

"I have found Thomson Learning's InfoTrac College Edition to be an exceptional learning and research tool. As a licensed mental health professional who works a busy 60-hour per week schedule, I find it difficult to take time to make a special trip to the library ever [sic] time I need information. InfoTrac College Edition enables me to search easily from home or office, and at my convenience. In addition, as a doctoral student who is doing graduate level research, I am able to quickly put my hands on the most valuable and current resources. Instead of taking days to do my research by hand, InfoTrac enables me, in minutes, to search thousands of professional journals to locate exactly the ones I need."

It’s pretty scary if faculty are actually tempted to adopt a textbook on the word of a PhD candidate who has never heard of PsycInfo and has apparently not used a library in recent decades. Beyond that, it’s infuriating to find our vendors pulling this stunt behind our backs.

I only learned of this practice when I was on a committee choosing a writing handbook for all of our sections of a first term seminar. An English professor with a specialty in Composition and Rhetoric told me she thought it was awful, but they get these pitches all the time. I can only image that a harried adjunct who commutes among three institutions to teach a handful of courses may think this bundled product is a lot more convenient than getting to know each library where she teaches a section or two of composition. But the students have learned nothing that they can use later; once that “free” password expires, they're on their own.

Cengage isn’t the only offender: EBSCO has pulled the same trick through partnership with Pearson, the world’s largest textbook publisher. Their Research Navigator describes itself as “the easiest way for students to start a research assignment.. with extensive help on the research process.” Pay no attention to that library behind the curtain. They’re a different market segment.

The message being sent in these marketing materials is deliberate falsification of what libraries are by corporations that derive huge profits from libraries. They intentionally mislead faculty and students who pay more for these bundled products by denigrating the services and products libraries provide.

Librarians need to be on the lookout for marketing schemes that extract money from our users under false pretences. Sadly, it looks as if this is one of the information literacy skills we need to teach: self-defense against corporations who make information their business.

Barbara Fister is a librarian at Gustavus Adolphus College, St. Peter, MN, a contributor to ACRLog, and an author of crime fiction. Her next mystery, Through the Cracks, will be published by Minotaur Books in 2010.

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