Baker & Taylor's Absence: Follett And Mackin Join Companies Stepping In

Follett Content and Mackin have joined Ingram and Libraria (formerly Children's Plus, Inc.) in working to fill the public library field's substantial distribution gaps following Baker & Taylor's bankruptcy.

Britten Follett, CEO of Follett Content, told Library Journal (LJ) that the company began researching how they could serve the public library space "months ago…. I knew Baker & Taylor was going through some financial challenges. I did not know that they were at the end of the rope. But we knew that public library customers were waiting, in some cases, months for their books."

The company is currently best suited to service small and medium-sized public libraries, Follett said, and will be looking into investments that will help streamline the ordering processes and fulfill requirements in place at larger metropolitan systems. The company is also looking into requests from public librarians for new features for its Titlewave online collection development platform.

Troy Mikell, Mackin's director of marketing and communication, said the company has worked with a few public libraries for years, but almost all its business has served PreK–12 schools. "I think those folks that can help library systems, like ourselves, [are] not only in a good position, we're really anxious to help," he told LJ. "We built our business on helping—helping schools, helping students, and helping educators. This is just an easy and natural extension."

While recent distribution problems have been frustrating for public librarians, Mikell said that the introduction of new suppliers in the public library market will eventually benefit the field.

Both distributors offer shelf-ready cataloged and processed titles with spine and barcode labels, MARC records, and Mylar covers, with additional options such as RFID tagging available, as well as a large selection of titles specially bound in-house for durability.