Budget
"We don't have budget this fiscal year"
"What is your budget? How is it planned and allocated?"
"I have to check with my boss."
"We are trying to figure out how to digitize our own archives, so we're not interested right now"
Quartex pitch
"Can I subscribe to just these 4 collections?"
No.
"Gale is based in the US and they are available at all hours. With your team in the UK, how can you help us if something goes wrong?"
Speak to Customer Support and our downtime maximum, etc.
"Although I am ranked as an R1, I don't have the same budget as my peers."
What schools do you consider your peers?
Do you participate in any consortia or collective buying?
"We're currently focused on other projects."
Tell me more about those projects? Tell me about your timeline. How are they impacting your collection procurement?
"We have security concerns with your platform"
Security pitch
UK has stricter laws than the US
"The learning curve is too steep for our team and our students"
Engagement/Customer Success pitch
"We have all of this physical microfilm that is taking up so much space in our library. Our main focus right now is to reorganize it, but the task seems so daunting"
AM Scholar
"This is too expensive"
What do you mean by expensive?
Value-sell.
"We need to wait until next fiscal year."
"We have a diverse population of students with a number of different accessibility needs. We have not had good luck with digital collections in the past, so we are hesitant to move forward"
Talking about accessibility standards.
"There is an overwhelming amount of content here. Is it even relevant?"
Asynchronous Tools: on our corporate website. Case studies, webinars that can be leveraged to promote the content that you have
Annual consultation with our team of experts that can help you with libguides, trainings, webinars for your team
We have usage reports, so you get a frequent understanding of what's been used. If it drops, we act proactively on it.
"AM is a UK-based company - everything seems like it is from the colonial perspective."
This is what we have in English and it is important to have to challenge the perspectives. We recognize our responsibility to increase the diversity of voices we present, and to address silences and inequities in the historical record, so in all of our resources we build in contextual tools to help students read against the grain.
"We need to see more significant return on investment before allocating funds."
We have a fantastic engagement team who is going to be reaching out to connect with your faculty and ensure they are getting the most out of your investment.
Engagement team pitch.
"I'm about to go on leave. Let's touch base next quarter"
Who should we correspond with in your absence?
Finding another contact.
"My students can only search within this collection - their research will be siloed"
Federated search tool
Pitch to Impact or Explorer
"We are a small institution, we don't have a lot of resources. Our students wouldn't know how to use primary sources"
Research Skills
"I am the Business librarian, and I'm currently researching the impact of digital transformation on traditional consumerism. What type of collection could you possibly have that could help me?"
On our website, you can search by different subject. Search by Business and Economics, you get 20 collections that support exactly that. Give an example of one.
"Our financial committee hasn't approved additional spending for new collections."
Who is that person?
What matters to them?
"The collections strategist position is vacant - we don't have time to consider this right now"
So you're just not considering anything because you don't have a person here? Are you close to hiring someone so you're putting collection procurement on hold? You still have money to be spent, you still have students coming to campus.
"Why isn't this just Open Source?"
In a perfect world, that would be the case. The issue that we constantly run into with open access is that the platform is not going to be as interactive, there won't be contextual technology, the handwritten text software is expensive, we liaise with editorial department and experts in the field, we pay the sources royalties. We're not just digitizing to digitize. These are vetted, curated, meant to have immediate usage.
"My school is a technical STEM school. Why would I want this content?"
Speak to interdisciplinary nature
Research Skills: "This is my job as the librarian."
Research Skills is designed to be supplemental. It is designed to be in-class or offline continued education.