Article on "Love your Online Vendor"

[Karen G. Schneider]

For my next American Libraries column (the Valentine's Day issue), I am
writing about establishing and maintaining good relations with vendors of
online databases, particularly commercial Internet databases. If you have
success stories to share, or other comments to contribute, I'd like to hear
from you *at my home email address*, kgs at bluehighways.com.  Please include
your name, library, organization or company, and city & state.

To elaborate a bit more on this topic, I have learned vendor relations by
the seat of my pants--I wish library schools covered this topic more
often!--but I'm very happy I have.  Working with vendors of commercial
Internet databases, I've found that they are often willing to work with our
specific situation, often eager to let us demo their product for a while,
interested in our feedback regarding the product, and frequently swift to
expedite problems when they arise.  This is not to say that I am always
happy with a product or its vendor, but (to get a little homespun) more to
say that if you can talk to people, you have a better chance of getting a
workable product at a price you can live with.

This article could even have a little "topic drift" to include producers of
related software and hardware.  To include a very recent success story,
after I found out our region would be using a product called IWare to help
manage our Internet services, I contacted Quarterdeck to ask some questions
about IWare and some databases we are using.  Not only did I get a prompt,
specific  answer, but the Quarterdeck person provided me with more
information, including a point of contact for related questions.


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Karen G. Schneider * kgs at bluehighways.com * schneider.karen at epamail.epa.gov
Author, The Internet Access Cookbook (e-mail Neal-Schuman at icm.com)
Director, US EPA Region 2 Library Contractor, Garcia Consulting
Cybrarian * Columnist, American Libraries
Visit our library at our new URL: http://www.epa.gov/Region2/library/
These opinions strictly mine!