Browns Books User Guide

User Guide Browns Books User Guide 1

2 Browns Books User Guide

Contents Introduction......................................................................................................................................................................... 2 Book Supply & Delivery..................................................................................................................................................... 3 Additional Features and Services.................................................................................................................................. 4 Print Book Supply............................................................................................................................................................... 5 Reading List and Discovery Tools.................................................................................................................................. 6 EDI and API.......................................................................................................................................................................... 7 Finance................................................................................................................................................................................. 8 Library Book Processing - Shelf Ready......................................................................................................................... 8 Catalogue Records.............................................................................................................................................................9 Returns................................................................................................................................................................................ 10 Customer Testimonials................................................................................................................................................... 10 Contact Information......................................................................................................................................................... 11 Senior Management Team............................................................................................................................................. 11 Regional Account Managers......................................................................................................................................... 12 Browns Books User Guide 1

Introduction Welcome to Browns Books Browns Books is part of the family owned A. T Little and Sons Ltd Group. The Little Group offers the most comprehensive range of physical & digital services available for books and entertainment products and has the largest stock holding in our warehouses outside of the US. Trading for over 40 years from Hull in East Yorkshire, Browns Books is a long established and respected book and DVD supplier to educational institutions – from early years all the way through to higher education along with specialist, medical and governmental libraries. Browns Books originally began in the 1800s from the bookshop premises in the heart of Hull’s city centre. The shop was a very much loved independent bookstore which traded for decades from the George Street site. In 1982 the business was purchased by the Little family who continued to expand, including the acquisition of Gardners Books in Eastbourne in 1986. In 2006 Books for Students was acquired and the company re-branded to Browns Books for Students. The following years saw the rapid growth in technology from the internet to trading via EDI and APIs. To this day we continue to evolve and develop providing the tools and services our customers need to maximise efficiencies. 2020 saw the next chapter where we reverted back to our original name of Browns Books as we continued to significantly grow in all of areas of the academic sector. In July 2021 Browns Books moved from the original premises in Hull’s city centre to a brand new purpose-built facility just 8 miles from the previous location. Our new home is an exciting and much needed investment to allow us to enhance our offering and capacity for our customers with a truly unrivalled service. The new site includes a dedicated educational and academic showroom (perfect for customer visits), events opportunities, and fantastic facilities for our staff along with significant room for growth. To this day, members of the Little family continue to direct and lead Browns Books with the family culture and values very much present throughout the whole business. Our separate user guides describe our websites and functionality in detail. Please contact our Customer Care team or our Regional Account Managers for any further information on any of our services. A separate user guide is also available for our eBook platform VLeBooks. 2 Browns Books User Guide

Book Supply & Delivery Browns Books will deliver your books to you in a timely manner whilst of course, being conscious of the environmental impact and reducing our carbon footprint where possible. Library Processed Books Library processed books are delivered free of charge. For in-stock items, delivery takes should be within 5 working days providing the value to release is reaches a minimum of £50.00. This takes into account any open order not just those in a specific batch. If the value is below £50.00, we will monitor daily and as soon as the £50.00 threshold is reached the books are released to our offices for processing. We will not hold onto any books longer than 21 days and therefore despatch after this time. This allows us to avoid sending small parcels daily, thus reducing our environmental impact. Should you have any urgent requests then please contact the Customer Care team. We are always willing to be flexible and understand that sometimes, items may be needed quickly. Non Processed Books For in-stock books that do not require library processing, next working day delivery is free of charge if the order value is a minimum of £50.00 and the order is placed before 4pm. If the order value is under £50.00 there is an option to pay a £3.95 Premium Delivery charge or choose standard free of charge delivery. Books are then held until there is £50.00 in value to release. As with serviced items, we will not hold onto any books after 21 days and items will release with no delivery charge. This takes into account any open order not just those in a specific batch. As ever, should you have any urgent requests, please contact the Customer Care team. For all non-stock books, we will record them until they become available and release in accordance with the above release criteria. Parcel tracking is available through our website A Shipping Notification can be emailed on the day of despatch detailing items shipped, items not immediately available and a tracking reference. Browns Books User Guide 3

Additional Features and Services Driving Cost Savings Our experienced team of Regional Account Managers will regularly review each account to ensure that you are receiving the best value and communicate to you any opportunities to reduce costs even further. Ideal for saving you money and maximising efficiencies. Selection Support We have a team of expert advisors who are vastly experienced in helping customers with the selection of specific stock based on your criteria. We can select titles up to a predetermined value which encompasses various subjects or indeed just one subject. We collate this information on your online account in baskets with selected titles that fulfil your requested criteria. You can view the selection and have the option to update the quantity of each title required or take out titles that may have already been purchased or that are not suitable, prior to order placement. Using this service can not only help save you valuable time & effort, but also help you get the most from your budget. Book Award and Collections The Browns Books website provides information on literary prize winners, contains topical collections, best-selling titles and newly published titles all listed in their own dedicated area on our website. This ensures that users have access to the most up to date information and the newest titles easily to hand. Ideal for building collections to support reading for pleasure, teaching courses and promoting current topical subjects. Promotions We regularly have special offers and promotions with many of the academic publishers providing even higher discounts. All promotions can be viewed on our website. This can help maximise your budget and enable you to plan for the academic year. Summer & Autumn promotions are just 2 of the promotions we run every year! Audio-visual material Our website has over 40,000 DVDs and CDs listed with discounts available. Ideal for media studies / extended library provision. OPAC Integration We have the ability to add an OPAC (Online Public Access Catalogue, or Library Search) link to the Browns website to search the customer’s library catalogue for the book they are currently looking at, to check for books/editions they may already own. The Book Bus Did you know that we have our very own Book Bus that tours the UK visiting schools, colleges and universities? The bus is stocked with specific institutional material where staff and students can be involved in viewing titles to add to their libraries stock. Scanners are provided to create selections for the acquisitions team to review and decide whether or not to purchase. 4 Browns Books User Guide

Print Book Supply Browns Books have the largest stock holding in the UK in our warehouses, with 800,000 titles and 20 million volumes of books. We believe that our buying capacity and strong links to publishers, allow us to pass on the best price to our customers. Browns’ are particularly proud of the fact we are completely transparent and our website is open and visible for our standard price and real time stock levels. However, to see your specific discounted prices you will need to log in. You can set up an account with access to your terms, which can be activated within minutes, and you can immediately order with no spending commitments. Prices and discounts are subject to publisher change. On the rare occasion where a price has been increased, we will contact you to advise. You then have the choice to accept the price increase or to cancel the order. We can supply any UK book in print at highly competitive terms, providing our customers with access to an all encompassing solution for print resources. Not only do we supply UK print titles, but we can also source titles from overseas too, along with titles listed as out of print and hard to find material. Even if it is not on our website we will endeavour to acquire the content for you. If a title is not in stock, when you place an order this will then trigger an order to the publisher and then stay recorded on backorder. We will regularly monitor such orders and chase up where required whilst keeping you updated through our website and an email report. Stock items are clearly visible on our website along with additional information for non-stocked items such as an estimated due date or an expected time-scale for delivery. Outstanding Lines Report Emailed monthly detailing all outstanding items including a report code and estimated delivery date. Cancelled Lines Report Emailed weekly detailing any titles which have become unavailable and have been cancelled A full history of all orders placed, both supplied and open are visible on our website. Standing Orders Our Standing Orders service provides a complete and dependable supply of series and annuals and therefore taking the responsibility and time consuming leg work away from you to manage such titles. Our dedicated team monitor the series publications through our supplier to ensure the orders are fulfilled. Examples of such titles are below; • Yearbooks and annuals • Directories • Proceedings • Book series • Title Updates On set up, the team will liaise directly with you on your specific requirements, including alternate editions if required, library book processing and delivery / invoicing requirements. We will also do our very best to apply discounts to your purchases where available. Browns Books User Guide 5

Out of Print Browns Books can supply you with out-of-print titles. Our team will investigate your request to find the best match against your buying profile including price limits & format preferences. Any books that are sourced can be supplied fully processed. The benefits of outsourcing such requests are to save you time and money – from credit card payments, sourcing, acquiring, book processing and the administering of the monthly credit card statement. We can work with you on how best to incorporate the Out-of-Print service in to your own work-flows. For more information on how we can assist with the more difficult to obtain titles, please contact our Customer Care team and we will be more than happy to help and discuss your specific requirements. Reading List and Discovery Tools Browns Books provides regular data feeds to third party providers and discovery services such as ESBCO, EBSCO KB, KB Plus, Ex-Libris, JISC, OCLC, SFX, Summon and Proquest. Please contact us for further information, or to confirm if your service is supported. We also operate a price and availability service via Talis Aspire, for buyers, you can link to the Browns Books website for each title to check price and availability. We also offer a Bookshop API for Talis Aspire so that Students can check prices and place orders directly with Browns Books. To configure either of these services, please contact support@ talis.com. 6 Browns Books User Guide

EDI and API Browns Books were awarded with BIC Technology Excellence in Libraries Award (TEiLA) for the period March 2021 – February 2022. This was awarded for our efforts and achievements in deploying beneficial technological developments and adhering to industry standards. This award covers the areas of bibliographic information supply and usage, electronic communication with suppliers, Radio Frequency ID solutions and systems integration and automation. All designed to improve customer service and operational efficiency at a lower cost. We can accept orders in various ways: Our website, email, telephone and post. We also support punch-out ordering systems as well as through Library Man- agement Systems by integrating using EDI and APIs. EDI and API functionality ensures that library & acquisitions teams can partner with us as effectively as possible. The use of electronic data feeds reduces the requirement for manual input and helps to minimise human error. We work with all LMS providers and offer a range of functionality from EOD (embedded order data) ordering all the way through to fulfilment messages. Our EDI capabilities include the following. • EOD • Ordering • Marc responses • Invoices • Fulfilment records • Reporting The Browns Books website is tailored to your requirements and for EOD, the ordering process is populated with your purchase order codes such as fund, location and stock category. Marc responses can also be supplied directly from our website. Please contact your Regional Account Manager or the Customer Care team for further information about EDI and APIs Setting up of EDI and API integration with Browns requires minimal effort. Once the relevant LMS information is sent to our Customer Care team, including details of your fund codes or API key, we will take care of the rest and provide you with regular updates on the progress of your set up. Browns Books User Guide 7

Finance The invoices we supply can be fully customised to meet the needs of each institution’s requirements. We can provide a monthly consolidated invoice if required. Invoices or Delivery Notes can be enclosed in all consignments in the agreed format prior to account set-up, and invoices can be automatically emailed. These invoices can also be downloaded as a PDF from our website. EDI invoices can also be provided directly into the Library Management System. Standard Invoice: Details, ISBN, Title, Author, Quantity, RRP, Discount etc. Bibliographic Invoice: Information that shows on all standard invoices including Publisher, Publication Date and Edition. Multi Location Invoice: Information that shows on all standard invoices including Location, Loan Type and Budget Code. There are no charges for any customised invoicing requirements or copy invoices. Email invoices are sent out automatically at the moment the invoice is generated, rather than when an order is despatched. As such, these invoices will be received much sooner than the books themselves. Payment of the invoices can be made via BACs, Corporate Purchasing Cards, Credit Card or Cheque. Credit terms are 30 days. Library Book Processing - Shelf Ready Browns Books offers specific shelf ready services which are designed to provide substantial savings to your budget and to ensure that books are delivered as quickly as possible. We provide a whole host of servicing elements which can be tailored to meet your library processing specification along with automated data exchange of Marc records, invoices and fulfilments. Whether it’s just a protective cover for your books, or a few servicing items such as stamping, date labels, loan types, RFID fitted and programmed and barcodes – we can provide this. A Shelf Ready form is provided for you to complete with your specification. We will work with you to produce a detailed set of guidelines and instructions to ensure that every book meets your exact requirements. Further details of all aspects of library processing we offer are available on request by contacting our Customer Care team or your Regional Account Manager. 8 Browns Books User Guide

Catalogue Records Our team of experienced cataloguers will ensure that ANY book has a catalogue record at the point of ordering (rather than despatch). This ensures that we not only have the record ready for when the book is supplied, therefore avoiding any delays, we also have a record available for the next order that is placed. Browns Books can supply MARC21 Records via FTP or Email. The bibliographic records we supply to customers are compliant with the NAG Quality of Shelf Ready Metadata report in that they meet the following essential criteria outlined by the report, with one or two exceptions. 1. Title(s) – including authorised Title Heading(s) (if applicable) 24X 2. Creator(s) – including authorised Name Heading(s) 1XX/7XX 3. Subjects – including authorised Subject Headings 65X 4. Resource-type, format & pub. data (Control Fields) LDR/006/007/008 5. ISBNs 020 6. Edition data (if applicable) 250 7. Publication/Imprint data 264 8. Physical description (pagination etc.) data 3XX 9. Series – including authorised Series Heading(s) (if applicable) 490/830 10. Electronic access URL – for e-book 856 11. Item classmark (LC/DDC/UDC as specified by library) 050/082/080 12. EOD – order info 9XX NB: We would not normally provide UDC class marks and not all control fields would necessarily be included in every record provided e.g. we would usually provide the 008 field rather than the 006 field unless it was already included in records sourced by us from external suppliers. Where possible/relevant we also include the five desirable criteria identified by respondents in the NAG report in the records we supply. The majority of these are recorded in 5xx fields in the MARC record, and add extra descriptive detail about the book, e-book or e-textbook to assist the user with resource-identification and selection i.e. 500, 505 and 520 fields. The 010 field containing the Library of Congress Control Number or the 015 fields containing the National Bibliography Number are frequently contained in records that are supplied to us. Browns Books offers different levels of records: RDA Catalogue Record Highest quality of records which will always be AACR2 Level 2 or RDA CIP Catalogue Record standard – compliant with NAG Metadata Standards Bespoke Record Records will be a mix of enhanced records and CIP (pre-publication) records. Records are not provided where we hold a lower quality record on our system Tailored to the institutions cataloguing requirements – additional lines may be added Browns Books User Guide 9

Returns There will be occasions where books will need to be returned. Please contact the Customer Care team in the first instance to raise return requests. Be aware that, notification of your desire to return items must be received by Browns within 30 days of the date of invoicing. Defective titles / Processing errors – we will arrange for the books to be collected by courier, replacements ordered (where required) and credits raised. Again, Browns must be notified within 30 days. Shortages - all shortages must be reported within 7 days Ordered in error – if the books are not serviced then we will contact the publisher to request a return. Where accepted we can arrange a courier collection for a flat fee, or you can arrange for the items to be returned to Browns Books at your own cost. Once the credit is received from the publisher we will credit your invoice. Please notify us at the soonest possible time as items may not be returnable Customer Testimonials “When we looked at their website, it was far more user friendly than our current supplier. It shows prices, new editions and release dates of upcoming titles/editions clearly; it is very easy to navigate and to search for specific titles and has the facility to create and save shopping baskets, which we felt would not only help to manage site specific orders, but potentially budgets as well.” The Manchester College So far, Browns Books for Students have exemplified customer service. They have taken an approach that is better than many of our other suppliers in terms of accountability and communication. Their success in this area is one of the key things that has ameliorated any potential frustrations during their development and growth. University of York ‘We are a busy College Library which switched to using Browns Books for Students as our main supplier in 2020. We have had absolutely first class customer service from them from day one when they went above and beyond in transferring all our existing ebooks over to their platform (VLe Books.com) at no charge. We have continued to use Browns Books for all our e-book and hard copy book orders since. Their supply is very efficient and the invoicing and account management is very easy. In terms of their e-book platform (VLe Books) it is not only from a library management point of view but also from students that we have had very positive feedback with our own students saying how easy, clear and accessible they have found Brown’s ebook platform. As a Library Manager I would not hesitate to recommend them as a supplier and we are sure that our students as the end users would say the same based on accessibility, ease of use and speed of supply when they make requests for new material. We very pleased with the helpful friendly service they provide. Thank you Browns Books! Mysercough College, Lancashire 10 Browns Books User Guide

Contact Information Browns Books 5 Redcliff Road Melton East Yorkshire HU14 3RS Tel: +44 (0) 1482 384660 Email: [email protected] The website also provides a live on-line CHAT function which is available during office hours. The chat icon is visible at the bottom right of the screen and can be accessed from any page on the website. Our offices are open from 08.30 until 17.00 Monday to Friday We have one of the largest Customer Care operations of more than 20 dedicated staff who can support with your enquiries, and our 6 nationwide Regional Account Managers who would be more than happy to come and meet with you to discuss your bespoke requirements. All of our teams are connected through our central communication system and calls can be seamlessly forwarded onto the right contact regardless of where they are located. All emails are received into a central CRM system where they are then sent onto the most appropriate contact to deal with your enquiry. Our CRM system allows us to monitor the volume of work and to ensure that you are responded to in a timely and efficient manner. The Browns Books team of Customer Care Advisors and all Regional Account Managers have the skills and technolo- gy to provide you and your colleagues with on-line demonstrations of our platforms, ideal for quick and easy support and also where it is not possible for us to visit you. Senior Management Team Yvette Stafford - Managing Director Ashley Stafford - Commercial Director Claire Smith - Sales Manager Nic Hales - Marketing Manager Steve Berrieman - IT & Product Manager Jordan Gardner - Accounts & Finance Manager Amy Watson - HR & Operations Manager Julie Devitt - Contracts Manager Claudia Mody - Content & Collections Co-Ordinator Browns Books User Guide 11

Regional Account Managers Our team of Regional Account Managers have many years’ experience of working in the library supply industry and are always available to help with any queries you may have. Sally Allen [email protected] East, South, East Midlands & Home Claire Smith [email protected] Counties Susan May [email protected] London & South East Stephen Mitchell [email protected] North West, Wales, Yorkshire, South West Keith Stanley [email protected] & Northern Ireland Garry Barber [email protected] North East & Scotland West Midlands, Hereford & Worcester Hull, York, Darlington & Teesside 12 Browns Books User Guide

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brownsbfs.co.uk [email protected] +44 1482 384660 V1.1.0 14 Browns Books User Guide