Librarians of mefi, what does "unable to purchase" mean?

August 16, 2023 5:03 AM

My local library has a form to recommend titles by their ISBN. I recently put in pretty much everything by T. Kingfisher as they only have a couple of their titles, and most of them were marked "unable to purchase". They've bought other titles and left some further down in the queue as recommended, still pending. Does that mean it's that specific version they can't buy, or it's declined for an internal reason?
posted by dorothyisunderwood to Media & Arts (10 answers total)

Very hard to say with any degree of certainty - there's not an "official" meaning to those words, which are probably just an option on a drop-down in your library's form response that's being selected by a human who may have gotten in the habit of using "unable to purchase" as a catchall.

But yes, it definitely happens that a library might actually be unable to purchase something. Probably the most commons reasons would be:

- out of print
- not available in the library's market (e.g. a public library in the US will usually not purchase UK editions of popular books)
- out of stock at the library's preferred vendor
- too expensive (although that's arguably more of a policy decision)

There are also of course lots of policy reasons why a purchase request might be declined but it's definitely *possible* for a book to just not be available, or not available within the library's normal purchasing process.
posted by mskyle at 5:26 AM on August 16, 2023 [5 favorites]

A lot of her books are self-published and print copies are only available via print-on-demand. It's possible that the library isn't able to order that kind of book (or at least not easily), especially if they primarily order from a distributor.
posted by gideonfrog at 5:49 AM on August 16, 2023 [14 favorites]

It does sound like perhaps budget and adding a variety of materials to the library system are factors. Best to contact people in the system to find out if there's a more specific reason listed internally.

Do you have inter-library loan through a local library? It's lovely to bring favorite author's works to people in your community, and sometimes just being able to get the title to read oneself is enough.
posted by interbeing at 5:56 AM on August 16, 2023

Yeah I bet it's her self-pub titles that they don't have access to. Hot tip: if you subscribe to her patreon, you can get ebooks of all of her self-pub novels for no further cost!
posted by restless_nomad at 6:00 AM on August 16, 2023 [7 favorites]

Likely the self pub issue in this case, but also could be a shelf space issue. A smaller library will not stock every book by an author because they simply don't have the space to do so and have to decide what is worth the space. This is especially true is tiny rural libraries, but also for a small town library or a branch. And if their patrons have easy access to the other titles through inter library loan or mutual borrowing agreements with a large library nearby, they may be even more conservative about such things, especially with books that are not recently published.
posted by carrioncomfort at 6:36 AM on August 16, 2023 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Thank you! I absolutely would love to hear more about library purchasing. The self-pub and ebook reasons are definitely a possibility so I'll also do an email to follow-up and ask library people I know locally for more info about which systems they buy from. We're a city-state, so all our libraries are basically one library. We have a fairly excellent e-book library and I know T. Kingfisher books on that are often on hold, so it's not a question of low demand.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 8:36 AM on August 16, 2023

You may be able to find it online. Most libraries have links to Libby, Cloud Library and Hoopla.
posted by Enid Lareg at 10:50 AM on August 16, 2023

Are you trying to get print versions of self-published books?

The system they buy from is likely not something you'd have access to or be able to look at inventory of. But my impression is that it's much easier for public libraries to buy ebooks of self-published books than print versions, especially if the print books are print-on-demand.

At my academic library, we don't have a policy not to buy self-published books, but they don't really come through our regular system, so it's a bit more complicated.
posted by bluedaisy at 11:24 AM on August 16, 2023 [1 favorite]

Librarian here: it's probably due to a lot of her earlier books being self-published, and thus unavailable for purchase via the vendor your library uses. At my library, we order through Ingram, with very few exceptions -- occasionally we will order via Amazon, if we have to, but it's rare. And our foreign-language books come from other vendors. But most books we buy are through Ingram. We generally don't buy self-published materials at all -- the only self-published stuff we have is from local authors who have donated copies to us as part of our Local Creations collection.
posted by maryellenreads at 11:51 AM on August 16, 2023 [2 favorites]

Another librarian here—
As a public library we concentrate on buying newer books rather than older ones.
In some cases we did once own an early title from an author but have discarded for age, condition, popularity, etc.

We also often have contracts with book distributors who might not have self published or older titles available to sell.
At my library we cannot buy from Amazon— due to our city-wide rules and regulations.

So those are some reasons a library might not be able to buy a specific title.
As mentioned earlier, the inter library loan service is specifically set up to borrow books from other libraries. Books that are old or books that don’t fit our collection profile as a public library.

Inter library loan services help the library meet your specific need without committing book budget money or shelving space.
Keep in mind that inter library loans are not available for recently published books.
This is because every library wants to circulate new books among their own system before sending them across the country.

Check in with your local library-
There may be a small charge per transaction or limit on how many requests you can have.
posted by calgirl at 12:27 PM on August 16, 2023 [1 favorite]