Issue 10: Spring 2008
Library Advisory Board and Focus Group
An overview by Susan Dearborn Vice President of Sales and MarketingFor over a decade Publishers Communication Group has been providing a service that allows you to hear directly from your most important buyers: librarians from academic, corporate and government libraries. PCG’s Library Advisory Board (LAB) and Focus Group service offers an opportunity for you to learn how librarians’ environments and user demands affect their decisions regarding your publications.
The two services are similar, but differ in terms of your objectives for the group. If you are interested in establishing an ongoing relationship with a group of librarians who will provide counsel and reaction to your ideas, then establishing an LAB would be the best approach for you. Library Advisory Boards typically meet once a year, and may be called upon by telephone and e-mail to advise a publisher on an ongoing basis. Each annual session addresses new questions, and revisits past issues and solutions that arose at prior meetings or since the last session. The composition of the group reflects the publisher’s customer base, and can also include representatives from a publisher’s emerging market segments.
Focus groups are typically one-time meetings, designed to concentrate on a specific issue during the session, rather than covering a wide range of topics. In earlier days, for example, we may have spent a full session reviewing and providing a critique of a proposed electronic journals license agreement. A focus group might evaluate a proposed new user interface for a publisher’s electronic journals platform, or look at alternative pricing models for a journals package or electronic archive. Based on a publisher’s objectives, we have also coordinated non-librarian focus groups of students, professors, researchers and other end users. The participants in these one-time meetings may not necessarily reflect the publisher’s library customer base, as LABs do, but instead may be selected because the can more ably address the specific topics of the day. For instance, if a publisher is interested in selling subscriptions to a new segment of the market, the group would be comprised of librarians from prospective subscribing institutions. Or if a publisher wanted to change their pricing policies regarding their electronic journal offerings, it might make sense to bring together the electronic resources librarians. They would likely have knowledge of a wide range of the prevailing journal purchasing options, more so than subject specialists who would be more familiar with the content of the journals.
The components (and associated costs) of the Library Advisory Board (LAB) and Focus Group service depend in part on PCG's level of involvement in making certain arrangements.
PCG is responsible for:
- Confirming the objectives of the LAB with the publisher
- Developing the agenda for the meeting, with the publisher’s approval
- Drafting the pre-meeting communication to prepare participants and provide insights into the agenda for the session
- Moderating the meeting
- Writing the report, analyzing results and making recommendations
In some cases, PCG is also responsible for: - Venue arrangements, including catering and A/V requirements
- Issuing checks for honoraria, and billing those costs back to you
Defining Objectives, Determining the Location, Recruiting the Participants and Preparing the Agenda
PCG works with you to determine your specific objectives for the group, and the kind of information you would expect to gather during the session. We also assist you in deciding if it would be more appropriate to establish an LAB or gather the information in a one-time focus group. Depending on the objectives for the group and the agenda that we develop to meet those objectives, the sessions usually last most of a day and include a working lunch.
Some meetings are scheduled to coincide with library conferences, as a way of reducing the travel costs involved in bringing the group together. This can make scheduling the group and recruiting the members a challenge if the process is not started months in advance of the conference, since librarians typically make early reservations to secure the lowest airfare and hotel prices. It can also be difficult to find a time in the schedule where your meeting will not conflict with board and committee meetings and cause resentment from the association organizing the meeting.
Another option is to invite participants to your offices. Holding the meeting at your facilities helps reduce the costs associated with venues at library conferences. It also allows you to offer a tour of your facilities, if this would be feasible and helpful to your image. Recruiting librarians from your local area also helps control travel costs.
As we refine the objectives together, we develop an ideal profile for the group of participants. This involves identifying the target markets to be represented, and determining how many librarians to include from each market. We work toward a blend of representatives from publicly and privately funded institutions, and participants from non-academic libraries such as government agencies, research institutes, commercial firms, or others as appropriate.
Based on the defined objectives, we develop an agenda and a list of probes for your review. This allows you to see how we intend to gather the information desired, and helps ensure that all intended objectives are met.
Pre-Meeting Preparation
Prior to the meeting, if appropriate, we e-mail the group members with "homework assignments" so that they will be well prepared for the meeting. This could include a copy of the agenda, a request to poll their library and faculty/researcher colleagues on relevant topics so that they come to the meeting with valuable opinions rather than random anecdotes and their own personal feelings about the subjects at hand. We would also ask each participant to sign a non-disclosure agreement so that the discussions remain confidential. This is particularly important if you plan to get their reactions to ideas for possible future directions.
Event Planning/Moderating/Reporting
Susan Dearborn of PCG serves as moderator and host for the meeting, guiding the members through the agenda, prompting them when needed, probing for the desired information, and redirecting the conversation if it strays off course.
After the meeting, we provide a synopsis of the discussions with an analysis and specific recommendations. We also suggest making an audiotape of the session for your own reference; PCG can handle this as part of the venue arrangements.
On behalf of PCG Susan Dearborn has conducted Library Advisory Board and focus group meetings for a wide range of society, university and commercial publishers of journals in medicine, technology, humanities and the social sciences. Publications addressed in these groups have ranged from major reference works in the humanities to multi-media electronic journals in the sciences. Susan relies on her experience as a librarian, as a salesperson for a subscription agent and automation vendor, and as a marketing consultant to scholarly journal publishers.
Publishers who have taken advantage of this service have found the feedback from the groups to be essential before they made their final decision regarding such things as:
- Archive definition and pricing options
- Package contents and pricing
- Branding and logo changes
- Editorial direction of specific titles
- Identification of new prospective subscribers for their journals
- Development of a new journal with unique features
- Division and presentation of catalog
Results of the meeting are presented in a detailed transcription of the proceedings, with an executive summary and recommendations resulting from the meeting. The publisher comes away with an understanding of which of their ideas and plans need to be strengthened, changed or canceled. Potentially disastrous and expensive mistakes can be avoided, and stronger and more appealing offerings can be made to broaden your offerings and enhance your image.
PCG looks forward to discussing your ideas of how this service could be useful to you as you determine your future directions.