The Bennett Blog

Staff Profile: John Bell

Mon, 14 May 2012 16:41:31 +1000

This month we introduce you to another member of our Sales Team - John Bell, who has been with the company nearly two years. Enjoy the read.

Name: John Bell

What is your current role/title: Regional Sales Manager, Academic Libraries (Australia and New Zealand)

When did you start at James Bennett? 30 August 2010

Describe your job:

My job is an enjoyable one with lots of upside. James Bennett sees the importance of having one point of contact for Universities as well as State, National and special libraries tertiary across the ANZ region. We have great clients and working across the ANZ region provides me with a unique opportunity to understand requirements facing tertiary and special library customers individually and generally. This gives me insights about market movements and allows us to be strategic in servicing and supporting our customers.

What are the main priorities for this role?
Working effectively with people, to understand complexity by acting as a conduit between customers and all service points. Translating requirements into effective workflows and communicating strategic and operational priorities at all levels are crucial. Understanding and supporting integration of technologies for all content formats (e.g. eBooks) and system workflows remain a priority in this sophisticated market. Visiting libraries as much as possible is important.

How would you describe a normal day at James Bennett?
Following up action points and initiatives and working to bring customer and technical service closer to customers wherever possible.

What do you enjoy most about your job?
Utilising knowledge and experience that I have gained in previous roles and getting across clients requirements and providing solutions in an evolving, complex market.

If you could fix one thing in your job, what would it be?
I would work out ways to bring customers to visit James Bennett more often.

What were your previous roles (here or elsewhere)?
I started my work life as a private Secondary School Teacher in Maths, Science and French. I then moved to Tertiary Lecturing in Information Systems and Computer Science at RMIT and left Education to work as an eLearning Development and Sales Manager with Asymetrix Asia Pacific and Multiemedia.com. In the IT industry I worked as an Information Systems Analyst and Project Manager and as an IT Development and Services Manager at Multiemedia.com for several years. I then Project Managed a DEST funded national project with the Faculty of IT at Monash University for five years in which we built a learning repository with IT teaching materials. Prior to joining James Bennett I worked for five years as an Area Manager with DA Information Services.

What books do you like to read?
Historical fiction; non-fiction that provides insights about life and the world.

Do you have a favourite author?
Thomas Hardy – because of his descriptive narrative and vivid depictions of English countryside and characters.

Currently reading? Tiger Men by Judy Nunn

Staff Profile: Sarah Cavanagh

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 09:00:00 +1100

Here at James Bennett, we like to tell you about our staff. Not because they are wonderful, hard-working, and dedicated workers, but because they also have such interesting positions and backgrounds. Today we introduce you to Sarah Cavanagh. Of course, many of our customers know Sarah but for those of you who don't, enjoy the read.....

Name: Sarah Cavanagh

What is your current role/title?: Sales Manager Customised Library Services

When did you start at James Bennett? 31st August 2009

Describe your job:
Indescribable! When I started at James Bennett 2 years ago I was employed to work with the Victorian Public Libraries. My job has now expanded to include working with customers who are looking for more than a book supplier but want to partner with us.

What are the main priorities for this role?
Working with customers who are looking at outsourcing workflows to James Bennett. We develop an overall solution – from how they order on JBO, how that information is feed through to Cataloguing, holdings and processing team, how we get records on to their Library Management System and then to how they need their invoices to appear and reporting needs.

How would you describe a normal day at James Bennett?
Every day is different – that is why I love my job.

What do you enjoy most about your job?
Working with customers. Librarians are a very interesting group of people. They are always well read and usually well travelled.

If you could fix one thing in your job, what would it be?
Only one thing! One of James Bennett strengths is our ability to track down any title by a publisher. The beauty of JBO is that it will show all publisher records! However this sometimes gets customers into trouble.... with these publisher records, we only upgrade the records with a JB recommends logo next to the title. These upgraded records have been checked with the supplier for correct details and have been chosen as the best source of supplier. If customers want to order from a publisher record they need to check with their Customer Service Representative.

NOTE FROM THE EDITOR: For those customers wanting to read more about JB Recommends, please click here. We covered it recently here on The Bennett Blog.

What were your previous roles (here or elsewhere)?
Sales Consultant to the Victorian Public Libraries. Previous to that I worked for Spydus, Civica for 4 years and prior to that I worked as a Liaison Librarian at Holmesglen TAFE for 4 years.

What books do you like to read?
I love a Biography – real life is fascinating Though I am partial to a Historical Romance.

Do you have a favourite author?
I have consistently through my life been a lover of Jane Austen. However I go through waves of reading the backlist of certain authors. At the moment it is Jonathan Franzen. I meet him at the Melbourne Writer’s Festival last year – he was very charming.

Last book you read?
Freedom – Jonathan Franzen.

Currently reading?
The Corrections – Jonathan Franzen. The man can write!

On the wishlist?
At the moment it is Peter May – The Lewis Man, or should I say each month the new title from Read It Love It, Add it to you Profile!

NOTE FROM THE EDITOR: You can go to our dedicated Read it, Love it, Add it to your Profile pages here.

Do you have a question for Sarah? If so email Marketing here. Let us know who else you would like to see profiled on The Bennett Blog!

Navigating our Book Award pages

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 12:25:38 +1100

One of the challenges we encountered with the new James Bennett website was how to manage our Book Award pages - particularly with so many industry awards! The number of subcategories of awards also made it a little difficult to work through an appropriate design and navigation path for libraries visiting our site. As such, we thought you would appreciate this helpful guide to viewing our Award Pages.

1. All the Awards we post on our site can be found at http://www.bennett.com.au/book-awards/

Simply scroll down the page and you will see all the Awards we cover on the website. This is not indicative of the Awards we cover in our Profiling & Selection team. Our Awards profiles with libraries is quite extensive - from major Awards to the more niche ones - and our Profiling & Selection team is responsible for getting your books to you as per your profile and collection development requirements. The James Bennett website covers a good percentage of Awards, particularly the majors, in Australia, New Zealand, Great Britain and the USA. If you feel an important award is not being covered on our site, please contact Marketing.

2. The Quick Links Menu on the left provides another view of the Awards we feature on the website by region.

3. When you click on a Quick Link e.g. National Book Awards you can then view all the Australian awards - both on the page and in the Quick Links that appear on your left.

4. Using either the page or the Quick Links, select the Award you are interested in.

5. When you click on the Award you will see two images unless the winner has been announced (in which case you will see three images - the winner on the left and two shortlisted titles that refresh on the right). We view only two shortlisted titles at any given time. Below is an example from the Blake Dawson Prize for Business Literature. Refresh the page and you will get another combination from the Shortlist.

6. Click on the > Read More button and you will be able to view ALL the Shortlisted titles for that Award on the Quick Links to your left. Below is another example from the Blake Dawson Prize. I selected Read More on the first book above and can now see ALL the titles that have been Shortlisted.

7. Simply use the Quick Link navigation to select the titles you are interested in.

8. If the winner has been announced just check against the award - you will see an order now link and a > Read More link.

9. All books featured in our Book Awards pages have an ORDER NOW link to JBO. Click on the button to place your order online with us.

If you have any further questions about our Book Awards pages or would like to comment on the website, or the Bennett Blog, please contact me on the Marketing email address here.

JB Recommends

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 21:30:00 +1100

As many of our customers know, we have a database approaching some 10 million titles. With the growth in ebooks, formats, and Print on Demand (POD) titles (including scanned documents and facsimile editions of varying degrees of quality), we have to continously monitor the incoming bibliographic data feeds, "protection rules" and "exclusions" for our customers. We work on getting the mix right so things like book spinners and other POS materials for retailers are not shown in JBO but sometimes those ISBNs pass right by us no matter how hard we try to implement solid business rules for data. But there's an easy way to identify the right products for your library.

Look out for this identifier in JBO. The JB symbol lets you know it's a recommended title for libraries. James Bennett staff have profiled the title, promoted the book or product in our sales kits, or placed the title in our New Titles Service.

In a nutshell, the JB icon shows a library:

Core titles suitable for all collections
Products listed in New Titles Services, purchased on profiled standing order plans and promoted in our sales kits
Best available editions
Best value editions
Publisher/distributor data updated and verified

Let our experience guide your selection and trust the icon. It provides peace of mind and a degree of certainty with your purchase. If in doubt, always contact your James Bennett Customer Co-ordinator on their direct email or phone, or send us an email at info@bennett.com.au We want to help you make the most informed purchasing decision.

A screen shot below shows the JB icon in action. Trust the materials with the icon. The others are not products we would recommend for libraries.

We will work on removing miscellaneous items from our database however as suppliers continue to create legitimate ISBNs for products and sending through bibliographic data, our data loading rules continue to be updated and modified in line with library requirements.

Trust the JB Recommends icon wherever you see it. Trust the James Bennett experience.

Read to Succeed

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 06:00:00 +1100

James Bennett has a distribution arm called Inbooks. Inbooks was formally created in July 2004 and became it's own business unit at that time. Inbooks represents dozens of presses, predominantly university, scholarly, and specialist presses to the ANZ book trade. They work on a separate system to James Bennett and have different sales, marketing and customer service teams. Libraries receive extremely competitive pricing on all of our agency titles and we hold inventory in our Brookvale premises.

One of the advantages of being part of the James Bennett business is the access to libraries with the wonderful LIS lists represented by Inbooks - Facet Publishing, ALA, Neal Schuman, Libraries Unlimited and more. To help support and promote new releases from these LIS presses, James Bennett set up a dedicated mailing list for customers wanting to know more about LIS releases. You can update your James Bennett e-newsletter subscription next time you receive something from us or you can contact Marketing to ensure you're added to the Library Science newsletter.

We also feature occasional LIS titles on The Bennett Blog. As the blog as now moved to this new website (isn't it fabulous?) you'll find alerts and news from us here. Of course if you want to see the original you can still find it here.

One of the books we want to highlight for libraries is a new one from Facet Publishing called Read to Succeed: Strategies to engage children and young people in reading for pleasure. Edited by Joy Court, the book reflects the impact libraries can have in growing readers for the future.

About the Book

This much-needed book provides valuable evidence of successes so far both nationally and internationally, and offers ideas for future development as well as inspiration for current practice. An edited collection contributed by expert practitioners, it covers all aspects of promoting reading to and with children and young people from birth right through to teenage years, including the following key topics:

it’s never too soon to start
how children begin to read
creating young readers: teachers and librarians at work
literacy, libraries and literature in New Zealand
the Summer Challenge in libraries: a continuing success
Stockport does Book Idol!: a case study linking libraries and schools to inspire reading for pleasure
there and back again: restoring reading to the classroom
promoting excellence: shadowing the CILIP Carnegie and Kate Greenaway medals
choice and motivation: local book awards
the sport of reading: the international Kids’ Lit Quiz
adventure in the book trade: libraries and partnerships
the hard to reach reader in the 21st century
creative reading and insideadog.com.au.

Offering future scoping for managers and aiming to inspire partnership and cooperation, this will be invaluable reading for practitioners and students of librarianship in both the public and school sectors. It will also be of great interest to all teachers, consultants and educators concerned with literacy and reading, and to policy makers in both the school and library sectors

About the Author

Joy Court is a Past Chair of CILIP Youth Libraries Group, a CILIP Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Medal Coordinator, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a Member of the National Council of UKLA.

You can order the book now on JBO by clicking here.

We launch our new website

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 09:00:00 +1100

Some of you may recall my reaction when it was first suggested that James Bennett needed a blog! Nine months ago we set up The Bennett Blog and in my first post I asked:

What message do we want to send?
Will anyone read it?
Is it an appropriate forum to engage our customers?
What about our suppliers - is this something that publishers will embrace?

Well thanks to analytics we know The Bennett Blog had over 14,000 views in that time! Many of our customers and suppliers were interested in what we had to say. We shared information about new partnerships, special industry projects, and a book review or two. But we say farewell now to the Blogger site and move The Bennett Blog here with our other communications. A new phase, and one that is much more streamlined.

We hope you enjoy using the new website. We're pleased to launch it. Some great features with direct links to JBO for ordering ease and better downloads for order forms. Plus, I think you'll agree, it looks better and is much easier to navigate. As always, we welcome your feedback. You can provide it here or feel free to comment below.

Our marketing staff will keep you posted with new products and services, digital resources, and special promotions for our customers so please bookmark these pages and come back and visit us regularly.

And of course, make sure you sign up for our e-newsletters as well. It's one of the best ways to find out about new offers and benefits to your library patrons.

Thank you for your interest in our business and we look forward to serving your library now and into the future.

Mr Chris von Hinckeldey
Managing Director