 Hello, this is Kim Doherty, career consultant with the San Jose State University iSchool, and I'd like to welcome you to our career podcast series. Our guest today is Buzzy Bash, who founded BAS subscriptions in 1995. Most of you currently working in libraries may already be familiar with BAS subscriptions through your own serials acquisitions and management process. And certainly I have followed their work most of my career so I am thrilled to have a chance to talk with Buzzy today. Let's talk a bit about Buzzy, although he's retired fairly recently from his subscription management company. Buzzy still keeps current with the profession and is, I would say in demand as someone who can provide, maybe a broader context for a lot of the trends that we're seeing today. So I would say think of this conversation as this is us getting to pull Buzzy aside at a conference and ask him a little bit about his experiences and his advice for all of you as you think about starting your careers in the library and information science professions. So with that Buzzy welcome and thank you for taking. You're more than welcome to be able to do it. So to start off, could you tell us a little about getting started as a library vendor. Well, I got started I went to work for FACTS and which many, many years ago as a assistant general manager and over the years worked my way up and became Vice President of Operations and had the opportunity then to turn a subscription agency was fully owned subsidiary and that worked out really well and then I went to work left there after four years and went to work for EBSCO. I did that for about a year and found that culturally it just didn't fit and then I did consulting work with ALA and the different library associations. And then when I found the software and we moved to New Hampshire, I was able to start my own business and that grew and became a $40 million corporation. Oh my gosh. Which is just amazing, amazing to me. Well, yeah, because you basically started it from scratch, but you had all of the background about the market and the industry and the profession. I called three librarians and one of them was out in California, Doris Helper and Doris said, Well, you got my order. I said, Oh my God, what do I do now? And that was the start of it. And I for those of you students who are listening and wonder how entrepreneurial companies get started. A heck of a lot of them get started the way Buzzy just described it sort of. What the heck take the leap and go for it. But I, I think one of the things Buzzy that probably informed a lot of your success is that you had built a reputation. Well, that's reputation is important. You have to be fiscally sound. But, you know, getting the software was an important step. And once I got software and the urge to help people, the just fell into place over the years. That's a pretty good combination. And while you were doing that, were you working with both public libraries and academic libraries? No, primarily, I started out working with medical libraries, corporate libraries, and then some academics. Okay. All right. So the next question that I have for you, because I know you've sort of seen a lot of these changes is. What would you say would perhaps or have been the most impactful changes in the profession in the industry, say over the past five to 15 years? Well, the surgeon electronic journals. That's been a big change. And probably 50% of the journals and growing rapidly is electronic today and more and more libraries, the users of libraries are looking to order their material electronically and not through paper anymore. And that's been a big change. And from your perspective, did that mean that you had to change how you were doing things? Well, you have to adapt. That's very, very important being flexible. And what I found was that we were developing a, you know, platforms where where customers could access their electronic material, what they ordered through the Asian or what they ordered directly. And once you get that working, then you can seek out more customer perspective customers and offer the service to them. And it seemed to work. I said, but it worked. And it really takes what's really important is that you have the people. I mean, it was never, I didn't feel it was ever me. I felt there was a people and what you need is brains. You need people that are looking to solve problems, people, because that's our job is to solving problems whether it be paper or electronic. You know, you have to make sure that the end user is getting them the material that they expected when they wanted. That's very, very important. I think that's a really good point because I know that when I have worked with students and I've talked about working for vendors, which I consider to be one of the coolest kinds of career paths in the profession. People think of working for a vendor as sales. And at this point, you know, sales is sort of like part of a part of a part, but your point about solving problems is really what. You're looking for his brains and looking for people that have the brains to be able to deal with multiple problems, being able to keep the customer happy, be able to keep the end user happy and the publisher happy. And that's not an easy task and it takes a lot of brain power to do that. And basically it's a people world. It's not a computer world. And you have to work with people and then that's the key requirement. And I find that out in an interview. That's pretty tough. That's pretty tough. I've met lots and talks, you know, I've given lots of talks at library schools and talk to a lot of prospective librarians. And they have to be into solving problems. They have to be interested in that and find that to be a challenge and interest to them. You know, you don't go to work for a vendor to protect the books. That's for sure. You raise a really good point then, because one of the challenges that students have when they graduate from an iSchool or an MLIS program is understanding how to present themselves in an interview situation that makes sense for the potential hiring organization. They're sort of thinking I need to say that I know how to do this and I know how to do this and I know how to do this. But what we hear back is, no, what hiring managers are looking for is exactly what you just said. They're looking for people who are adaptable. That's correct. Technology is very important and it's certainly been changing over the years. You don't have to be a technologist to be able to deal with problems today. What you have to be able to be is flexible. And learn from your mistakes or learn as you go along. There's no guarantee that you're going to be a technologically expert. And I don't think the vendors are looking for that. I think what the vendors are looking for is problem solvers, people. People with good minds and that's very critical. I've had people working for me that wanted to be editors. Other people that wanted to be children's librarians. And if that's what you want to do, then you don't want to go to work for a vendor. I mean, it doesn't make much sense to go to work for a vendor if you're, you know, your career path or you're looking for, you know, walls or a niche to work in. Right. You know, I don't know. And the work that you were doing and that people would be doing with you as employees of Bash subscriptions. Were you doing international work or was it mostly international? No, international and domestic. The focus was on domestic where we had a major customer in Russia. We had a major customer down in South America. Wow. By the way, most vendors require that their foreign customers prepay. Well, it's, you know, I've had one librarian work for me at Bash subscriptions, and she didn't think customers should have to pay a fee. So, you know, that's how you compensate it. That's how you get your salary. You know, you can't do it for nothing. This is an interesting dilemma because as someone who who loves the idea that information should be free, but who has also written a number of books. I really love getting a royalty check. Well, my days of royalty checks are over, unfortunately, but I can appreciate that. We did a book with Neil Schumann years ago on buying serials and collected, I don't know, for about 20 years we've collected royalties. It's a dilemma for librarians because I certainly understand and. Well, under a lot of pressure, you know, the libraries today are faced with issues that didn't exist 20, 30 years ago. And one of the pressures is that the libraries look to certainly academic libraries who looked upon as being cost centers and not producing any income. And therefore they should be reduced. So the administration says. And that's a real challenge. How do you deal with this environment like that? Whereas in a corporate setting or in a business, you see a face with the same issues. You know, what are the priorities? How do you set priorities? Where do you put a limited amount of resources and settle looking at the academics look at it and say, well, we don't we don't need a library. We can go directly. Everything's available on the Internet today. I, I think you're identifying a very salient problem, or I would say it's a challenge and I would say that that librarians are becoming much more astute and effective at countering that mindset, but they are beginning to do it by showing return on investment. And, and I think it's taken a while for all of us to get there. But it is, it is, you know, for example, the difference between something that you would find on the Internet and a serial that's peer reviewed or whatever is night and day. But you need to be able to articulate effectively that distinction to a chief financial officer in an organization or to the provost at school. So I would agree that this is a huge issue. Well, I think the management, whether it be in a library or in a corporation are always fighting and challenging as to what the priority should be and where the resources should be placed. I mean, that's, that's an ongoing issue. And today, everybody gets involved in it. And then certainly, you know, if you got a library degree, what you're bringing to the table is a little good head, good brains. And that's very, very important. I would agree. I think if we're heading in the right direction that that is what comes out of a grad school experience in informational work. So let me sort of focus you then on that idea. If you were hiring someone today, say this was say all of a sudden, you know, this could be a good thing and a bad thing. Say all of a sudden you were back in charge and you were hiring for a position for a bash or for some other undertaking. What questions would you be asking in that? Because that's a good question because I personally feel that I haven't been very successful at it. It's a difficult, you know, how do you know if a person has good brain power, has flexibility? You know, you talk about it and you discuss it with them. I always felt that the openness is really important being open and developing conversation or rapport with the person so that they understand where you're coming from and you understand where they're coming from. It's a, you know, I don't have a checklist of questions to ask somebody. It really depends on their background, their experience. You know, do they want to be a big fish in a small pond? Do they want to be a small fish in a big pond or a big fish in a large pond? How do you get that out of them? You know, and you've got to sort of temper your own feelings. That's pretty difficult. That's interesting. That's a good point because all of us in a hiring situation do bring our own sort of worldview. Yeah, your own biases. Yeah, exactly. One of the things that I am seeing happen more and more in hiring situations is people saying, tell me about a situation where you had to deal with this. Or in a hypothetical situation, if you were confronted with XYZ, how would you go about making a decision in that situation? Yeah, it sounds good. I would ask questions. I try to get as much information in the background what they're looking for, what the desire is, what their hopes are. Where are you going to go with this? Where do you want to be? What would you like to be? Do you need definition of everything? Can you be flexible? That's a great question because so much of the work that's going on now, whether you're in a vendor situation or even say a corporate library or in any kind of an emergency organization is, can you think on your feet? If you need constant guidance. How are they dealing with people? Yes. It's a people world and basically whether they're dealing with customers or dealing internally with the staff, how do they handle people and what's their track record for people handling? Interesting. That's a key element when you're staffing, when you're trying to build an organization. Can they deal with people that have, you know, everybody has some sort of issues in their lives. That's all part of it. Well, it is. We sort of think of our ideal candidate or our ideal organization and the reality is actually what you just said, everybody's got issues in their lives. A friend of mine that she went to work at a public library is a director and the previous director was still getting paid and hadn't been in the library in two years. I mean, God, it's unbelievable, but that's, you know, different strokes with different folks. That's a job we were looking for, Buzzy. I'm not sure you'd want it. I would have to say, I don't think I would. It sounds functional. Yeah. And then, you know, how do you get, when you hire people, how do you get them to be assertive and go after additional business and say you're dealing with medical library? You know, how do you say, you know, you want to get to the departments and see how the departments are ordering? You know, can you go around that person? If you go around that person, is that the librarian going to get upset? Right. You know, some people just have a knack for it, but you can raise that, you know, you just have questions. Well, those are some of the questions that you might ask. That would be great. Because not only is that a hypothetical, that's a, you know, a challenge that people would actually be faced with. Another one that I've seen having worked for a vendor is how well do you build relationships? Because customers these days really are relationships. And sort of that's where it starts. And if you're not comfortable doing that, if you're looking more at it, you know, this is just a transaction. I think that's less successful. No, it's always the people. I mean, I always felt it was a people issue. Interesting. We've got to deal with people. Remember, never the individual transaction. Transaction is just part of it. You know, it's the mechanical part of it. It's the people part that's important. You know, learning. The most successful people that I've had work for me, they were with library degrees. Those are the ones that have been able to deal with people and deal well and have a good rapport and sensitive to their needs. And go back to them with questions about their family, about their kids. I really care. You know, digging deeper and deeper. And that's what you do. They become part of your organization. And I would have to say, I think you're the best example of how that works because we've been in the profession for a long time. And you're still very much sought out for your opinions for your ideas and that sort of thing. And I, from my perspective, that's one of the cool things about this profession. That's one of them. Yeah, it's really cool. It's great. You just keep. Well, that's why I enjoy it. Me too. All right. I will wrap us up for today. But Buzzy, thank you so much. You have more questions or if I can be of additional help, just let me know. You're on my list. You'll be hearing from us. Thanks so much. You're welcome, Kim. Thank you.