Month: March 2026

People Are Better Than Systems: 5 Reasons Why Human Expertise Trumps Shiny Centralisation

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I am really looking forward to presenting about this topic at the NAG Seminar 2026 in Nottingham on May 20th and May 21st (open for bookings now, get signed up and if you aren’t a NAG member, consider joining this fantastic organisation)

At the seminar, I will be talking very specifically about the knowledge and expertise that has been invaluable from our teams at University of York, consider this a teaser article that covers a small fraction of the concepts, ideas, and examples that will be delivered (powerpoint style) to Seminar attendees.

“Centralised systems are best! Do you really need all those spreadsheets? Wouldn’t it be easier to just get all your data from our shiny system? Why keep all that messy data spread out over so many teams? Don’t you want to retire all of those dusty old spreadsheets?”

This is the siren song of the modern vendor. Whether it’s a global publisher or a data aggregator, the message is relentless: centralise, codify, and create efficiencies. They want us to retire those dusty old spreadsheets and move everything into a proprietary, cloud-based black box. It is a powerful sentiment, and on the surface, it makes perfect sense. Who wouldn’t want a sleek, unified dashboard over a mess of local files?

However, as we have discovered at the University of York, the efficiency of a system is often a fair-weather friend. When the time comes to leave those services, or when the system’s development roadmap no longer aligns with the institution’s strategic interests, the messy data and the deep knowledge of the staff suddenly become our most vital assets. While systems offer scale, they often lack the granular resilience of human expertise.

Image by Bob Dmyt from Pixabay

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Buying and Managing E-Books for Acquisitions Librarians. Part 5 – The Wider Sector

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In our previous post, we dove into the somewhat surreal world of library analytics, where a turnaway is the digital equivalent of a student lamenting access in the stacks, and marketing is the art of promising a party where there’s only one chair. We’ve looked at the metadata, the licences, and the spreadsheets.

Now,, it’s time to look more widely, because as much as we’d like to believe our acquisitions strategies exist in a vacuum of local need and budget, the reality is that we are small fish in a very large, occasionally predatory, corporate ocean. It’s time to move beyond the practical and address the Wider Sector, the politics, the power moves, and the collective push-back that defines our industry in early 2026.

Our journey so far:

The Elephant in the Room: A Broken Market?

If you feel like the e-book market is a bit like playing a game of Monopoly where the rules change every time you roll the dice, you aren’t alone. Many in the sector describe the current landscape as fundamentally broken.

Image by Bruno from Pixabay

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Buying and Managing E-Books for Acquisitions Librarians. Part 4 – Statistics & Promotion

Anth SinnottLeave a comment

In our previous post, we looked at the “invisible” life of an e-book once the invoice is paid. We explored the high-stakes world of metadata, the frustrations of DRM, and the ethical imperative of accessibility. We established that buying the book is only half the battle; the other half is ensuring it actually works for the human at the other end of the screen.

Here is a breakdown of the series so far:

But how do we know if it’s working? And once we have a collection that functions, how do we make sure people actually use it? Welcome to the latest part of my series, Buying and Managing E-Books for Acquisitions Librarians Part 4 – Statistics & Promotion.

Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay

Statistics: The Signal, the Noise, and the Weapon

In the digital library, statistics are ubiquitous. We are currently awash in an exhausting volume of data, from COUNTER 5.1 reports to granular platform analytics, that promise to underpin our collection strategies. When harnessed correctly, this data is the engine of a truly dynamic service, it allows for Just-In-Time (JIT) acquisition and a responsive, data-driven strategy that mirrors the actual needs of our researchers and students in real-time.

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