In light of the many industry-wide supply chain issues impacting publishing and libraries, both LSC and the publishers are advocating for early ordering as much as possible. We thought it made sense to give a bit of space to why early ordering is important, and how LSC's catalogue and ARPs make it easy.

Early Ordering refers to ordering books before they are published. LSC considers anything ordered more than three weeks before publication an Early Order. Once we know an item will be published, sometimes up to 18 months in advance, it is available to order. This includes DVDs, which are available to order the day the movie is released in theaters.

For many collections, a fair amount of the materials your patrons will want won’t depend on what they are about, but who they are by. As an example: we know that James Patterson will release many new books this year. Often the items will be known by a placeholder title, like James Patterson Chef Detective #5. This item will go into our ordering catalogue, at which point you can pre-order it straight away, and get that On-Order MARC into your system and generating holds. If you have an ARP, the Selectors will be aware of the item and might order it for your account immediately, depending on the instructions in your ARP profile. 

A few months before publication, the publisher officially updates the title to James Patterson’s Five Star Murder. We update the title information in the record, and include the item in selection lists, catalogues, etc. which are available digitally via Issuu and within the ordering catalogue. For Best and Solid Seller titles, these will be listed in our Notables catalogues, which list all the items that will be published in the coming quarter, not the previous. Meaning, anything ordered from these lists when they are released will be an Early Order.

Part of the process of ordering books from vendors is shipping time from the publisher. This is because library vendors, unlike commercial vendors, do not keep a standing inventory of items in house. Items post-publication are shipped to us as they are ordered. This adds time to when a library will receive an item. If everyone orders James Patterson’s Five Star Murder in advance, we know that we need to bring in x number of copies straight away. With the industry delays affecting shipping times, both from manufacturing centers overseas, and from distribution centers once they have arrived, publishers are already seeing delays by weeks or months past the initial street date, and are warning buyers that reprints will be effectively non-existent for the next while. Meaning, once the original print run is gone, it's gone. They have said that they will increase initial print runs based on pre-orders.

Normally, LSC would receive pre-pub items a few weeks before the street date. Our cataloguers and processors then set to work on the copies that need such things (taking a couple days for priority items), and the item moves to shipping, where it awaits each library's shipping day, to arrive before street date. If you wait to order the book until the date you could also buy it at Chapters or Costco, we have to wait for the item to come from publisher, then also go through our processes. Time that was saved by other libraries pre-ordering the item.

In the midst of these delays, we receive items when the publisher is able to get them to us. We push the items through our internal processes at the same rate as before (due to our internal efficiencies, we're largely moving as fast as we can already). And the items arrive at the library with their next shipment. As of the date of this publication, publisher's haven't officially moved any pub dates, which means the majority of items won't be meeting street date. This is a reality for everyone. If publisher's start moving street dates, we'll keep you updated via our Weekly Newsletter. 

Delays or not, by taking advantage of early ordering, you guarantee your number of copies for your patrons, and save yourself weeks or months of additional delays, or worse, the announcement that the title has already gone out of print.

Finding items available for early ordering is easy. Aside from the ones listed in the Bestseller Catalogues, you can search for items via the Advanced Search Screen within the catalogue. Searching Author is the best way to find materials pre-publication, then limit your search via "publication date" to either “Next 30 Days”, “Next 90 days”, or choose a date range in the future. Ordering is otherwise normal. Additionally, our Selection Lists allow you to access specific content relevant to you and order directly from the list.

Unique to LSC is our Budget Management system, which allows you to identify your annual budget by collection type, track what you’ve spent and are committed to spend within the calendar year. The remainder that you are committed to within this report would fall into a future budget, and therefore if you are doing early ordering well in advance, you are able to simply and accurately track that budget. And you’ll always know exactly how much you have left to spend.

LSC's Selectors are here to help with any Ordering assistance they can provide. All our Selection Services come without charge. You don't have to be on an ARP to have our Selector build your library lists or even carts. They are also happy to work with you to identify specific authors that are high interest that you should keep a regular eye out for. And those libraries that are on ARP, if you want to change any instructions in your profile to promote early ordering, you can do so at any time. Please contact Jamie Quinn for all your Selection assistance.

To keep up to date with all of LSC’s latest offerings, please follow LSC on Facebook, on Instagram, on Twitter, our YouTube Channel, and now on Issuu. We also encourage you to subscribe to the LSC Weekly Update, and we hope you check back each and every week on this site for our latest musings on the publishing world.

The publishing industry is currently being affected by large-scale delays. These delays are the result of many different pressures on the supply chain, including shortages of truck drivers and trailers, congestion at the ports, escalating transportation costs, paper shortages, and more. This has resulted in titles across all collections types having unforeseen delays. 

LSC is taking the following steps to remain knowledgeable and proactive in response to these delays:

• We have increased staffing to ensure that when items do arrive at LSC, they experience no additional delays moving through our processes and in getting to you.
• Our Selection team has ramped up ordering beyond our normal peak and end-of-year volumes, to ensure as best we can that budgets are met by year-end.
• We are prioritizing the release of A-list/highly visible bestseller titles as best we can.
• We are in constant communication with our suppliers and publishing partners to have the most up-to-date information about when items are expected, when items will have known delays, and when Best Sellers have their pub dates pushed. When we know, you'll know.

As the talking point has warned us, there is a “new normal” affecting every industry, and the publishing world is no different. As this article from Publisher’s Weekly highlights, the problem has no single source, and as such no easy solution. Part of this is driven by the Great Resignation, which - in America - at least 4 million people have quit their jobs in this past spring. This combined with already high levels of unemployment and a recession in the US have caused ripple affects across multiple sectors, where there simply isn’t enough employees to carry out the amount of work needed in certain areas. Major commercial shippers are cutting their capacity by 25% or more because they can’t find qualified drivers.

Add to this a global shipping congestion. You’ll no doubt remember earlier this year when the Ever Given was stuck in the Suez Canal for the better part of five months. This caused significant delays to the global shipping industry. Add to this, continued closures at primary Chinese ports, from which a huge majority of products – including paper and books – ships out of. For decades, industry has shifted production and manufacturing to China due to low costs, and the global affect of that decision is a bottleneck for a considerable amount of product.  When supply is low, demand is high, and prices rise. With spots on the ships that are getting out at a premium, costs for those spots have quintupled. And the cost of the materials being shipped, like wood for paper pulp, have tripled. This isn’t just affecting the publishing industry – no doubt you’ll have noticed that coffee is getting more expensive, as is gas, toilet paper, and chocolate. 

Last year, the industry was impacted with printing capacity issues, and these continue, adding another layer of delay. Industry experts expect gift books, box sets, art books, cookbooks, and coffee table books to be the most effected - anything with high gloss and lots of colour pictures. They are also forecasting long delays for reprints, especially on high interest materials. The advice is, pre-order in advance. While the fall titles are already on ships, transports, and in some warehouses, these effects will linger well into 2022. Those analyzing the situation also have no optimism to report, and expect that things will continue in this way for the next 18-24 months. Moreover, as life experience teaches us, when the cost of things goes up it rarely comes back down.

As for what LSC is doing in the face of all this is paying attention and being proactive. For ARP accounts, we regularly order bestseller titles as soon as we know they exist, anywhere between 6 months to a year and half in advance. For those libraries doing their own ordering, we recommend ordering well in advance. If you normally wait to within a couple weeks of release, don't. Order as soon as you can. Our Selectors are happy to build lists, carts, or help your selectors in whatever way they can, you need only ask for help. Additionally, order from our best seller catalogues as soon as they are released. The Spring Notables for Adult and Juv will be out in October, and the Winter catalogues can be found in the Selection List area on our catalogue or through Issuu. 

We are also talking with our suppliers regularly, and when we have definite information, we will pass it along. As of right now, official shelf dates for Fall Best Sellers have not moved. Despite this, we know that many of those titles will have some unofficial delays. Every publisher is affected, and affected differently. It is our commitment to you that when we have information, when we know how this will impact your budgets and collections, and your patrons, we will let you know with as much notice as we receive ourselves.

We’re all in this together. And we will get through this, together.

UPDATE OCTOBER 5th:

Publisher's Weekly hosted a webinar on Oct 5th, with leading US industry experts to discuss the situation. While much of the information remains unchanged from above, additional details were shared.

Across the industry, production has moved oversees due to 40% savings when things are working well. During COVID though, there has been an increase in demand (for instance, a 12% growth in adult fiction - the highest since 2008) complicated by existing issues and new problems. Before the pandemic, there was already a steady increase in the cost of wood pulp (which is currently higher than a previous peak in 2014), and a significant loss in skilled workers in the printing industry. Approx. 1.2 million workers in the US have been lost to retirement alone. Paper mills and printing presses have been closing in record numbers over the past five years. The labour cost to bring on new staff is steep, and many companies are easier going out of business or choosing to close.

Getting items from oversees to the publishers have seen shipping times increase from 3 weeks to over two months, with bottlenecks at both ends (in addition to COVID, there are also apparently fires in China forcing ports to close. On the other side of the Pacific, the Port of Los Angeles has over 70 ships waiting at sea to dock and unpack, compared to a usual one). Once items do arrive, they are subject to the previously mentioned delivery shortages. FedEx has introduced caps and increased their pricing, and Canada Post has noted that package deliveries will have delays as we head into the Christmas delivery season. The experts suggested that long haul shipping will see driver shortages be common for the next six years.

These longer lead times have started to impact publication dates. For now, many publishers are pushing titles back by weeks (see below for a current list of know delays). They are trying their best not to postpone or push titles into new publishing seasons, especially for A-list titles with lots of marketing. However, that could be a possibility in the coming publishing seasons. They are advising, as we are, that you pre-order items in advance so that they can up initial print runs based on demand, as reprints are basically impossible for the time being. 

Our publishing partners have alerted us of some known delays to specific titles based on the Industry Delays affecting us all. The following titles have had their publication dates pushed back. In this case, these titles have all been delayed due to printing capacity issues.

UPDATE OCTOBER 8th:

We have received word that Video Games are likely to be struck with some delays in all formats. The majority of video game software is routed through a small number of manufacturers in the US who are suffering from staffing shortages within their plants. These delays are then compounded by the delivery issues experienced by everyone. As a result, it is expected that last minute changes to title release dates, and late deliveries past street dates are expected as we enter the largest and busiest season for video games.

UPDATE OCTOBER 12th:

While Multilingual materials from all locations have been affected by the international shipping delays that everyhting else has, we have been alerted by our Japanese supplier that, due to the earthquake on the 7th, distributions centres in Japan are experiencing delays. 

UPDATE NOVEMBER 22nd:

As much of the world is aware at this point major highways connecting the city of Vancouver, B.C. and the Lower Mainland to the rest of inland Canada are currently closed, and rail traffic in and out of the Port of Vancouver is also closed.

UPDATE NOVEMBER 24th:

We have received the following news from Raincoast Books in Vancouver:

I’m happy to report that with highway 3 open for freight traffic, albeit at cautious speeds, our two main carriers report the beginning of eastbound trucking. They both have distribution facility backlogs, which include some of the shipments we gave them last week but both are making positive signals about clearing up the backlog.

Barring further shutdowns, they expect to be able to start picking up from us again by Thursday Nov 25.  You can expect to begin to receive the backlogged shipments from us from approx. Nov 24 + normal transit time to your area.  And then newer orders after that.  For those of you who don’t know, highway 3 is a windy mountain route that will add some transit time – perhaps a day or so - to any shipments coming your way from our facility.  The main highway, #5, will not be fixed for many months.

Please reach out if you have any questions or concerns to Jamie Quinn, Manager of Customer and Selection Services.

PDF versions of our catalogues are available on Issuu. 

LSC is proud to announce that as of January 2021 we will offer libraries the option of receiving topical subject headings that are more respectful of indigenous peoples instead of, or in addition to, the professional-standard headings in LCSH and CSH, which currently use colonial language.

Backstory

The Truth and Reconciliation commission delivered its report in Dec 2015. This report included the 94 Calls to Action. A little over a year later, the Canadian Federation of Library Associations delivered its own report reacting to the TRC, and included 10 of their own calls to action. This report was endorsed by 37 associations and organizations across Canada.

This project, to create respectful Indigenous Subject Headings, is meant to be a step towards fulfilling the spirit of Truth and Reconciliation. It specifically is designed to achieve one of the CFLA calls to action, action 5: “libraries should strive to decolonize access and classification.” While it is beyond our power to reorganize Dewey (though we have worked with several libraries who have created their own bespoke classification schemes), subject headings are another matter entirely.

We were asked for a number of years by the majority of our clients for a solution. Especially because a solution does not appear to be forthcoming from our national standard makers. LAC has been reviewing Indigenous terminology since at least 2007. As of 2019, LAC continues to say that consolations are on-going, with no timetable for when they will make recommendations to changes in Canadian Subject Headings. Likewise, as of 2020 RVM has said they are forming working groups. For many of our clients, this wasn’t good enough.

In the mean time some libraries had begun to work on the project themselves, in isolation or with regional partners. Prominently in this regard is the University of Manitoba, who established their own working group in 2013, unveiled a prosed list in 2016, and implemented it in 2018. In general, universities were able to get working on this project earlier than public libraries as, in general, universities have the funding and bandwidth to tackle such a major project. That being said, many libraries across Canada are at some stage of this project themselves, examples include PEI, Toronto, Regina, Greater Victoria, Peterborough, and so on. 

LSC’s Project

In 2018, LSC’s position was to wait for LAC to provide a national standard or at least recommendations. It was our understanding at the time that an announcement would be made soon. In 2019, the announcement was that there were no timelines. This spurred LSC to action. As a non-Indigenous Canadian company, LSC recognizes Canada’s colonial history and our place within it. We recognize how existing library standards continue to subjugate Indigenous Peoples by perpetuating names appointed by settlers, and have chosen to take action to affect real and substantial change within our industry. LSC feels the act of appropriate, respectful representation for indigenous peoples in library records is long overdue. This correction to years of misidentification of cultures and peoples is too important not to take action upon. Doing nothing was simply no longer an option.

Why did we feel that we had any purview to undertake such a project? LSC has what amounts to one of the largest cataloguing departments in Canada. We catalogue - item in hand – 50,000 new titles a year and work with over 120 libraries across Canada. When we were created 50-odd years ago, it was to be a cataloguing and processing house, and while we have grown over the years into a full service vendor, we have a longevity of experience cataloguing, and cataloguing for scale.

At OLA 2019, we made contact with representatives from the Greater Victoria Public Library, who were developing their own list building on the work done by University of Manitoba as well as other consultations. With the idea that good work builds on good work, GVPL’s list was open source, and so we were able take it and adapt it. We undertook a research project, both reaching out to others who had been working on similar projects, and using the GVPL list as a base. At the same time, requests for these headings increased from clients.

By OLA 2020, we were able to announce that we would be able to start testing and implementing our list within six months. Then COVID happened. LSC was shut down by provincial order from March until June, and much of our energy after June was invested in getting our operations back up and running, and adapting not only our own COVID safety requirements, but those individual needs of our libraries, in different provinces with different levels of restrictions that were constantly in flux. However, despite the delays, we were able to take our list live in Jan 2021, and have been in full implementation since.

It is critical to note here that these are not in any way official headings. They are not approved by CSH or LOC. They are empathetic headings. LSC has been doing empathetic cataloguing based on the individual needs of libraries for years. This is the first time we have pushed out an empathetic service to our entire client base. It is also important to note that our original position stands: we have neither the authority nor the inclination to say that our headings are the final and best option. This is a living project that will continue to evolve over time, until such time that LAC, RVM, and LOC finish their consultations and provide national standards. A considerable amount of the technical work we did was to ensure that when a national standard is revealed, we’ll be able to update or override our headings with the new ones.

We worked with our ILS provider to create a way that we could uniquely input the new headings, and flip those headings into standard fields when sent to a library. So, when we create a new record, the colonial headings continue to be entered in a 6xx field, and we flag the heading with a $9x. This tags this headings in our system, so we can more easily locate it in the future. The new headings are entered as local headings in a 69x field.

When the MARC record is sent to a client, our system converts the 69x field into the appropriate corresponding 6xx field, and is coded with a 4 in the second indicator position. What our clients see are just the 6xx fields, either with a $9x which doesn’t affect how the record appears in your ILS, or with an indicator 4 to identify it as a non-LOC or CS heading. Why go to all this trouble? So that when a national standard is released, our systems department can map that list both to ours and to the older headings, and update the whole system in one fell swoop. And that includes working with libraries to updates the records in their ILS, which I’ll get to in a minute.

What does our list look like? As I mentioned, the base of our list was the GVPL list, which in turn took into consideration the work done by the University of Manitoba and others. Not every institution has publicly shared their lists, and we are grateful for GVPL for sharing theirs. In their spirit, our list is not strictly proprietary. We are not publicly sharing it, however, feel free to contact us to discuss how we might help you.

We would ask if you do, that you provide feedback. Perhaps your institution is already doing this work themselves, perhaps you are curious to see what others are doing. We are curious as to what everyone is doing. Everyone will have different regional priorities. What is most important to Saskatchewan won’t be what is most important to New Brunswick. We consider this to be an on-going, collaborative project, and consider the current version of the list version 1. We are fully prepared to issue updates to the list as needed, and the best source for updates come from feedback and further research.

That being said, the current list features nearly 2000 altered, updated, or created headings. The priority focus here are Indigenous peoples in Canada, but North America is well represented. There are an additional 500 headings for South America, and GVPL had identified a long list of global Indigenous groups for whom no work has been done yet. The nature of the new headings adheres to the notion of “call people what they want to be called, not what you want to call them.” Some headings, like “Indians of North America” have been removed entirely. A common question we have gotten is, what is the logic we use to apply “Indigenous peoples” vs specific groups, or headings like “First Nations”, “Metis”, or “Inuit”? We use “Indigenous peoples” as the most general heading. “First Nations”, “Metis”, or “Inuit” would be used on items that are primarily about those groups. And of course, the preference is always to use the specific individual names for groups and bands whenever possible.

Stage One

These new headings have been live since Jan 2021. In that time, they have been added to all relevant, newly created MARC records. They have been delivered to our clients without additional charge as part of our cataloguing service. This will be our standard service moving forward. Until such time as a national standard is developed, we are delivering both the older colonial headings and the new headings in our records. If a library wishes, they can elect to receive only the new headings, and approx. 25% of our clients have thus far decided this is what they want. It doesn’t matter to us which way it happens, and those decisions are for each library to make for themselves. Internally, we’ve been updating records created before Jan 2021 with the new headings, prioritizing items from the last five years as they are more likely to be wanted by libraries than older materials.

Stage Two

This stage depends on you, the libraries of Canada, retrospectively updating their catalogue with the new respectful headings. We are also undertaking several retrospective projects with libraries, to update the records already in their ILS with the new headings. As this requires a considerable amount of manual work on the part of our staff, we are currently charging for this service, and will provide a quote to any library interested. The quote will be based on the number of records in your collection that need updating, and is priced for cost-recovery. Critically, because we are only providing updates based on standardized subject headings, we can do this retrospective work with any library regardless if they are a current client, and if they created the MARC record themselves or received it from another vendor. If you want to know more about how LSC can help with retrospective work, please contact us.

Stage Three and Beyond

based on feedback, the list will be updated as needed. At the time of updating, we would be in contact with libraries and provided the updated headings where needed. And once a national standard comes along, we will work with libraries to ensure the smooth transition from one list to another. It will be work for us down the line, but work we have accepted to do, because it was becoming increasingly clear that no action in this regard was worse than action that might have to be changed or repeated.

Looking beyond Indigenous headings, we have already started to receive requests from clients to do a similar empathic headings project for Queer headings. Right now, based on our research, there is less consensus in the community as to what terms would be preferred, and we are working on getting involved with libraries that have made their own lists, or are forming working groups. Still, viable headings of this sort are likely some years away. Likewise, the headings related to immigration are in need of improvement. In 2016, LOC gave recommendations to implement improvements, but they were not enacted due to American political pressures at that time. We shall have to wait and see if those changes are made official, but we at least have their recommendations that we can act upon.  

LSC is located on the traditional territory of the Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabe, and Attawandaron. LSC is located on the Haldimand Tract, the land promised to the Six Nations that includes six miles on both sides of the Grand River. We also serve libraries across Turtle Island, the lands now occupied by Canada. We recognize and respect the deep history and heritage that these lands bear, and also recognize that Indigenous peoples continue to shape and strengthen our communities. As Settlers, we're grateful for the opportunity to live and work here.

Due to scheduled maintenance, our secure ordering services will be unavailable from Friday, November 6th at 9:00 pm until Monday, November 9 at 7:00 am.  

Everyone is working their way through a new set of to-do lists that look nothing similar to what they were doing in early March. Many budgets have been shifted to electronic collections that patrons could take advantage of during the time library doors were closed. Now that libraries are reopening, staff members are juggling the tasks of filling holds, managing quarantine, cleaning of materials, and trying to figure out how best to spend the remaining collection budgets in a short time frame.

LSC’s selectors are trained professionals in spending collection budgets. Their help, with a few LSC tools, can maximize your budget whether you have had to cut, remain the same, or were able to add funds.

LSC’s Administrative Console is a very useful tool for budget tracking. The ADMN login is additional to your regular OLSC login and has many handy features, especially the real-time budget tracking. By quickly entering your budget amounts per fund, you can see how much is spent, how much is outstanding, how much has shipped, and more. This quick glance makes making decisions like moving money to another fund, easier.

In addition to the publisher catalogue selection lists we produce every week, LSC releases Bargain Books selection lists every 2 weeks that feature backlist and newer titles available at steep discounts. This lists can be especially useful to supplement children’s programming, or to backfill series. You will continue to find our regular monthly LSC catalogues like Mass Market, DVDs, Large Print, Small Press, Graphic Novels and more on our website as well as on Issuu. You'll also find the lists for all Findaway products including Wonderbooks, Launchpads and newly released Reading Academy. 

From the front page of LSC’s website, you’ll see featured topical selection lists based on current world events and social relevancy like Black Lives Matter, LGBTQ+, Trans Support, Indigenous Voices, and more. The selectors put these together using resources to ensure they are valuable additions to Canadian library collections. Aside from the topical lists, the selectors can make specific suggestions for your library based on circulation data, budget or collection type. In their ARP selections and suggestions for budget management, they ensure, especially where budgets have been cut, that libraries are still receiving top of the market and popular material.

We do anticipate some publication date changes in the seasons ahead, as COVID has affected printing schedules industry-wide. LSC will do our best to communicate these changes to you, and make sure your orders are preserved. LSC’s selectors are here to help. If you need carts put together, specific selection lists created, or simply advice on how to proceed with a smaller budget, they are here to help alleviate some of that stress. Just reach out.   

And now, some collection specific updates from the Selectors.

Angela Stuebing, ARP Coordinator and Graphic Novel Selector:
Graphic Novels are as popular as ever for readers both young and old, and are continuing to be released on a regular basis.  We have specifically seen an increase within the Juvenile collection.  There are so many fantastic titles from some of our favourite authors such as Svetlana Chmakova who wrote the Berrybrook Middle School series (Awkward #1; Brave #2; Crush #3).  The first book in the new Weirn Books series shouldn’t be missed as part of your collection either!

Young Adult/Adult Graphic Novels should not to be forgotten when looking to boost your current event displays, both in the library and on your website.  The recent announcement of the Eisner Award Winners has overlapped with some of the LSC produced topical lists.  Some highlights include: Best Publication for Teens and Best Writer winner Laura Dean Keeps’ Breaking Up with Me, and Best Graphic Album winner Are You Listening.

Rachel Seigel, Adult Fiction Selector:
Fiction publishing has felt the impact of the COVID shutdowns, primarily in the form of delays and cancellations. Many titles that had previously been announced for publication from late winter onwards have been either pushed back to fall or into 2021, but there will be plenty of regular print titles and big name releases to fill out budgets. Thanks to the quarantine, there is renewed attention on “pandemic novels” such as the buzzy new novel The Companions by Katie Flynn which focus on the effects of massive global outbreaks on a population.

The areas that have been more severely impacted by cancellations and postponements are mass market and large print where we’ve definitely seen a reduction in available titles. If your library has a large budget devoted to these categories, this might be a good time to look at series gap-filling, or bumping up copies of popular titles.

Karrie Vinters, AV Selector:
While theatre closures may have affected box office titles, the rest of the film world seems to be keeping up just fine. Direct-to-DVD, TV series, documentaries and re-releases of classics seem to be releasing as per usual, with maybe fewer children’s titles than normal. Libraries may want to consider opening up their collections to these other areas in order to get their budgets spent. TV series on Blu-ray and DVD are on the rise, with more people staying home and ‘binge-watching’ their favorite shows, both old and new.

There were some delays earlier this year regarding video game production, but the fall appears to be heavy with great new releases, including the new upcoming platforms Playstation 5 and Xbox Series X.  With so many people playing video games to pass their time, this would be a great place to increase spending as this collection is known to circulate very well. Similar to video games, some music releases that were slated for a spring release were delayed to the fall, so watch the upcoming music lists for these exciting titles.

Stefanie Waring, Non-Fiction Selector:
As an introvert, I like being at home and I keep myself busy; I cross-stitch, write, og jeg lærer til og med norsk (my grammar is atrocious but I have a lot to say about bears).  But with COVID, many more social people are now stuck at home, looking for something to do with themselves and/or their kids.  This has led to a rise in nonfiction about activities at home, both in terms of homeschooling and in terms of stuff to do that isn't just gaming and binging Netflix.

Although schools have reopened, their situation is in constant flux and so libraries are especially interested in nonfiction for all ages that supports the school curriculum, including the new commitment to teaching elementary-school kids how to program.  Outside of school, science - especially nature science - has risen in popularity, many people are discovering new recipes, and there's even been an uptick in witchcraft and spirituality.  With the shift towards people working from home, I also anticipate that upcoming seasons will see more nonfiction on remote work, technology that allows it, and how to be productive outside of the office environment.

Sara Pooley, Children’s Product Manager:
As a mother of 4 kids myself, I was incredibly thankful and privileged to have a variety of fiction books while stuck in quarantine at home. This helped pass the time and entertain all the girls (and get them off their devices!) However, there are only so many times you can read the same story before you want or need something new. While my one daughter discovered Percy Jackson for the first time (contact me for if you want to refresh your collection with this classic series), my other daughter discovered a love of thriller/murder and young adult horror. Some of her favourites have been Killing November, a thriller set in a secretive boarding school by Adrianna Mather.  The sequel Hunting November was published in May this year. My daughter also loved One of Us is Lying, along with the sequel One of Us is Next by Karen McManus.  She is very excited to read a new book also by Karen McManus; Cousins, a YA book full of family secrets and mystery, coming this December.

As happy as I am to see Young Adult Fiction taking off during this pandemic, my other favourite collection has not fared as well: board books. Because of the tactile nature (babies love to gnaw and touch these highly engaging books), they have naturally taken a hit, so libraries have cut back spending in this area. I can only speculate that caregivers with babies who would have traditionally taken part in a library “Books for Babies” initiative which allows play, talk and browsing, are not braving the holds queue at the moment for books that harbor germs. That said, if budget allows, there are two amazing new board book titles through Orca that would make great additions: Little Owl and Little Squirrel, part of the All Natural series by Britta Teckentrup.  

Julie Kummu, World Languages:
World Language/Multilingual purchasing has continued to rise over the past few years as libraries strive to maintain and enhance the provision of multilingual materials within their communities. LSC has also recognized this need and responded with offering services such as: including original script in MARC records; cover art for multilingual materials; transliteration stickers; selection lists; and, more frequent shipments throughout the year. While the availability for print materials continues to grow, there is a significant downward trend in the amount of AV materials produced in NTSC format & legally copyright for Canada.

As countries around the world continue to deal with the impact of COVID, acquisition of multilingual materials in 2020 has been challenging process. Many countries have been forced to lockdown for months, as a result multilingual publications and shipments have been delayed. This continues to be a fluid situation, as second waves are being reported and possible additional closures are required.  LSC is in contact with our multilingual suppliers on a regular basis, receiving updates as the situation continues to evolve.  As information is communicated to us, we will reach out libraries to let them know if there are any difficulties supplying certain materials; at this time, we will provide various options on how we can proceed temporarily to complete the 2020 budget year. 

Since we have re-opened in June, LSC has continued to receive a steady flow of multilingual materials, which so far has included materials in the following languages, but is not limited to:  French, Chinese, Spanish, Persian, Hindi, Panjabi, Tamil, Russian and Hebrew.

Libraries have had a hard time, and will be living with the ramifications of the lockdown and continued COVID safety measures for months, if not years. As a not-for-profit, LSC is focused on helping in whatever way we can. If you need additional help for a couple weeks, a month, six months, however long, we can take things off your plate and ensure that new materials continue to arrive in a state that saves you money, time, and stress. We will build lists, build carts, develop temporary ARPs, take on cataloguing, processing, whatever you need for however long you need it. It hasn’t been an easy time for us either, but together we’ll be alright.

To keep up to date with all of LSC’s latest offerings, please follow LSC on Facebook, on Instagram, on Twitter, our YouTube Channel, and now on Issuu. We also encourage you to subscribe to the weekly Green Memo, and we hope you check back each and every week on this site for our latest musings on the publishing world.

Please continue reading for important information regarding LSC's reopening.

Shipments will resume the week of June 22nd.
LSC’s management team are working hard to make the changes to the LSC workplace that will allow us to re-open with our employee’s and customer’s safety top of our priorities. Because LSC is more like a very large technical services department than simply a warehouse, the changes are somewhat complex.

In the week of June 22nd, shipments will be of material that was in house at LSC when we closed in March. However, we will quickly begin providing material published since then. Our processes prioritise bestsellers and other popular items. These will arrive – in quantity – starting the week of June 29th.

• We will ONLY send material when you have confirmed that your receiving is open.

Changes to shipments

All LSC shipments will be labelled to show the date that the box or bin was packed at LSC.

Selection Services
Our selection department is already back at work. Fall bestseller catalogues are in development and will be released ahead of schedule in June. Other fall selection resources are also in development and will be ready for ordering into the summer. Many new fall titles are already in the LSC database and can be ordered.

If your library has made changes to your budget or ARP profile, please let the LSC selection team know.

LSC selection staff are also available to assist with recommendations in any area that your staff might have fallen behind in.

Reducing touch points
The best way to get material to patrons safely AND quickly, is to reduce the touch points when it first arrives at the library. To this end, LSC is happy to do any finishing steps that the library would normally do before items are shelf ready. Just ask.

Stay safe
Michael Monahan, CEO

LSC wants to thank everyone for the kind thoughts and emails we have received during this crisis. We hope that everyone is and remains safe, and extend our best to each and every library across Canada. We’re here to help in whichever ways we can. We’re all in this together.

We are aware that your needs and status are constantly shifting during this time. While LSC’s warehouse is closed to comply with the Ontario Government closure of non-essential work places, we have ensured staff are available to meet your needs remotely.

Please reach out to the following immediate contacts:

Fran Quinn, Customer Service Representative

Customer Service and general enquiries
fquinn@lsc.on.ca

Angela Stuebing, ARP Coordinator

ARP and Selection Services requests
astuebing@lsc.on.ca

Trish Hayes, VP of Marketing

Marketing, Cataloguing, general enquiries
thayes@lsc.on.ca

Michael Clark, Sales and Marketing Representative

Sales and Marketing, general enquiries

mclark@lsc.on.ca

Services available during warehouse closure:

• LSC.on.ca is fully operational. Carts can be built, orders can be placed, on-order MARCs can be downloaded, and reports can be generated.

• Publishers continue to send us new title information, which is reflected in the database. This includes any changes made to publication dates. Due to pre-pub and ARP ordering, most summer and many fall titles may have already been included in orders.

• Titles not in the database can still be requested via the L1 function on the website to ensure titles not provided by our publishers will still be ordered.

• ARPs continue to be maintained. If there are any changes your library needs to make to their profiles, please contact us, and we will make any adjustment necessary.

• If there are any custom selection tools that your library wants, please let us know.  As before, LSC is focused on making things as easy for you as we can.

Special notes concerning some services:

• Release dates have been postponed or delayed for AV materials. We will provide selection tools for these materials when physical release dates are confirmed.
• If the physical closure of library branches has caused shifts in your physical materials budgets. LSC will make any changes a library wants to their orders. Please feel free to contact us and make adjustments to fit your changing needs.
• LSC will be sending the second installment Fixed Price Processing Plan invoices on schedule from May 1st. However, we are extending the period for volume adjustments to August 1st, as we understand that actual unit volumes for 2020 may have been impacted. We will make any adjustments to final billing / credits as needed. Please let us know.

For the immediate future:

• LSC will be reaching out to libraries individually to help us understand what your timelines and priorities are.
• LSC will ensure that we communicate our own timelines to our clients as the situation develops.
• LSC will work with libraries who have requests for how they want to structure their receiving of materials (ex. best sellers above all else; shipping delays after packaging for in-box quarantine; increased shipments; etc.)
• Once we have a picture of what will be needed when libraries reopen, LSC will develop an internal plan to make it happen.
• Reducing touch points on materials is likely to be a concern when libraries reopen.  Box-to-shelf for new material would be the straightest line to that end.  Any library that wants to add processing or cataloguing options to their profile to achieve that is encouraged to let LSC know. 

We’ll speak to you soon.

LSC is proud to announce our Comic Book Subscription Service!

Graphic Novels have long been a part of library collections, and have seen increased popularity as interest rises across all age ranges. Libraries have even started putting on their own mini comic cons. However, for those unfamiliar with the material, it can be an intimidating collection to maintain.

With so many titles, with on-going and limited series runs, and content appropriateness a factor, it can be hard. LSC prides itself on the value and scope of its Graphic Novel service, it becoming one of our most requested ARPs. We are happy to extend the same diligence and selection to individual Comic Book issues as well.

These issues mostly run 24 to 30 pages printed on magazine stock. Many libraries use these issues to add to their juvenile serials collection, though as with Graphic Novels titles are available across all age ranges. This service can also service as a testing ground for titles whose Graphic Novel bound editions could be added to a regular collection later on.

LSC is offering this service without cataloguing and processing. Should a demand for a cataloguing record emerge, we will happily develop a format that works for the library on request, likely a serial monograph for these titles. LSC will not be providing processing on these items for the time being, as like magazines they are more fragile, and we feel it is best to extend the shelf of the product to simply ship them untouched. 

There are hundreds of comics titles published every month, from a variety of publishers and on a variety of frequencies. Our Graphic Novel Selector will work with libraries to cull this intimidating list down to titles relevant and valuable to each library. If you aren’t sure where to start with your comic book collection, we will offer suggestions based on popularity in other public libraries. Do you already have a popular Graphic Novel collection? We can look together there for inspiration, as to what might be popular for a monthly title.

As part of this service, LSC will provide:   

• Suggested series lists based on popularity amongst public libraries, for collection age groups.
• Series updates provided, along with suggestions for replacements when titles end their runs.
• Tracking of series done by the selector.  ex. 14 different Batman variations published in the month of August. 
• Publication schedules tracked by LSC (bi-weekly, monthly, quarterly).
• Monthly shipments to libraries.
• Bulk ordering discount!

Trade discounts will be applied to most titles, and consistent monthly shipments will keep your comic books readers entertained with the newest chapters of stories. With LSC's service, there is no long term commitment to any title. If Scooby-Doo isn't working for you after a couple months, cancel the title and try something else, such as Ninja Turtles. There is also a limited ability to get backissues of titles, so if you'd like to start your collection with several of the most recent issues, we will try our best to accommodate . Availablity of backissues will vary based on title and publishers. 

For more information, or to start your own Comic Book subscription, please contact our Graphic Novel selector Angela Stuebing, at astuebing@lsc.on.ca.

LSC is proud to offer libraries a more budget friendly, Canadian option for libraries supplies.

Even for libraries which receive processing from their vendors, there are supplies which are valuable to keep on hand. And for libraries doing their own processing, supplies are a required component to their day-to-day operations. However, the price of supplies can be detrimental to an annual budget. Aware of this hardship, LSC conducted an analysis on what libraries would be paying for supplies from the conventional vendors, and what LSC paid for the supplies it sourced. Having one of the largest processing departments in Canada, LSC purchases a large volume of supplies. Large enough to be able to offer libraries extended discounts.

One of the harsher costs involved in supplies is shipping, especially when cross-border duties and currency conversion are factored in. With LSC's service, shipping for supplies follows current rates with existing clients. More than that, items will be shipped in the same boxes or tubs as your books and AV material. And, because we know that supplies are often paid from a different budget, separate invoices for supplies will be issued.

LSC's supplies service is a two tier system. Tier one are the supplies that can be ordered directly off of our website via Slist #43174, or from our printed catalogue. These listed items are kept in inventory at LSC. Items can be added to carts and ordered directly. When ordered, they will be taken from inventory and put in your next scheduled shipment. 

The second tier is for unlisted items. As LSC deals with a variety of vendors for supplies, there is a wide range of items that could potentially be available to libraries through us. Anything available through Demco Library Supplies is available through LSC. However, unlisted items are not kept in inventory. If you wish to receive a quote for unlisted supplies, please contact Supplies@lsc.on.ca. Please provide a link or example of unlisted material, if available. No purchase is necessary to receive a quote for unlisted items. However, orders for unlisted items must meet a minimum $200 total value. Quoted items are ordered once a month from suppliers, and will be shipped upon delivery to LSC.

Bulk purchasing and pricing is available. For more information or to receive a quote, please contact Supplies@lsc.on.ca.

LSC is excited to announce the launch of its newest search engine update: BISAC subject searching.

A lot has changed in the world of searching since we went live with our first online catalogue. Google and Amazon have changed expectations for how people search, and what kinds of results they get when they search. While much can be said about how both of those corporate giants push results to users, and searching on their platforms isn’t as effective as people think it is, the fact remains: you type a thing, and get results regardless. While LSC has long offered the most powerful ordering tool available to public libraries, built in-house by our programmers, the search feature has remained surgical rather than general. That changes today.

Using BISAC subject headings, our catalogue is now far more open to generalized searching, and far more forgiving to the kind of searching that people are used to in the modern day. Using nondescript terms like “cars” or “travel Canada” will now return a broad range of items, allowing users to browse available materials on subjects rather than locate specific items. You don’t need to know the exact BISAC heading - TRUE CRIME / Abductions, Kidnappings & Missing Persons, for example. “Abductions” or “True Crime” will return results.

It will, in fact, return too many results. You will get the “maximum number of results found” error. Which is why we strongly advocate making use of the many Limiters, including Format, Material Type, and Publication Date make this search all the more effective. With the BISAC search you can narrow your search to just paperbacks published in the next two months about “Cooking”, which will return a bountiful, relevant, current list that you are able to browse and order from at your convenience.

To increase the effectiveness of this search even further, users can now combine in any order words from the Title, Author, Series, Dewy and BISAC in the Keyword search for more structured results. “Oliver cooking” in hardcover from the past thirty days returns, for example, a single result – Ultimate Veg, by Jamie Oliver. A Keyword search of “Canada Train travel” – the sort of search you might run if a patron is looking for books on train travel in Canada and you just want to see what we have – with no limiters returns 5 results, pulling from both the title and BISAC.

This BISAC search ability greatly increases the power of catalogue, allowing users like you more flexibility in locating items for your library. And for the majority of items in our catalogue, this search is incredibly effective. However, nothing is perfect, and we admit that. Programming allows us to make use of only what is available. BISAC subject headings are provided to LSC as part of the OYNX feeds from publishers that we use to populate our catalogue, meaning these items are now BISAC searchable from the moment they are in our catalogue; no additional input from us is required. This is not the case for AV and Small Press materials, for which we do not receive ONYX information and are manually entered by staff in-house. Should publishers of these materials ever provide us with information we can import into our system, it would immediately be searchable. However, given these industries, this is unlikely to occur. As such, DVDs cannot be found using the BISAC search. Keyword, Title, and the Slists remain the effective way to located AV materials.

The desire to have a more generalized search in our catalogue was something we heard from library staff across the country. And when we hear a request like that, we listen. We take every bit of feedback we receive, and we turn it into action. Some actions take longer than others. Implementing this function was not a fast process, and refinements will continue to be made, as refinements are constantly being made to everything we offer. We appreciate and encourage libraries to let us know how they use all of our services, so we can continue to make improvements which benefit everyone.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact Michael Clark.