Vendor Services

Academic libraries are complex organizations, and can be slow to change because of their multifaceted relationships with university administration, faculty, students, and consortial partners. The integrity of, and access to, vast and valuable collections must be maintained simultaneously with the acquisition of new media formats and the adoption of new technologies.

R2 offers a broad range of services to organizations seeking to serve academic libraries including: 

• Approval Plan Design
• Product Design & Development
• Focus Groups
• Product Introduction & Marketing
• Sales Representation
• Web Site Evaluation
• Customer Training
• Animated Tutorials

Approval Plan Design

The next generation of collection development tools and practices will integrate eContent in its various forms, new linking technologies, and take advantage of "virtual" surrogates for print books. Rick and Ruth have extensive experience with approval plan design and methodologies. This experience, in addition to their many years spent writing approval plans in academic libraries, and their expertise in eBooks and electronic advance information from publishers, gives R2 a unique perspective in helping libraries and vendors alike to build new collection development tools and practices.

Product Design & Development

Web technologies are developing quickly, creating new opportunities for book vendors and content providers. R2 assists library vendors to remain viable contenders by analyzing the current and anticipated marketplace and then by redesigning or building new web products and database access services.

Most recently, R2 helped to design YBP's GOBI Edition 2 , released in January 2003.

Focus Groups

The key to success in the academic library market lies in intelligent listening and questioning. Given a forum, libraries can provide valuable guidance to companies seeking to introduce new products and services. R2 has developed strong relationships with many librarians and has extensive experience presenting new products and facilitating group discussion. Many companies have found R2 focus groups useful for product introduction, design, and initial marketing.

Product Introduction & Marketing

R2 has introduced, developed, sold and maintained products and services in the academic library market for more than 25 years. We understand how libraries work. We know how they budget, what their major goals and concerns are, and what problems and opportunities confront them. We know many key decision makers. Most importantly, we know how to listen to them, and how to present product information in a way that addresses their needs.