If it seems like new books have been taking longer to arrive at the library lately, you’re not imagining things. Libraries across the country have experienced a slowdown in getting new material into the hands of users as a result of some recent (and dramatic) changes in the supply chains we rely on. Last October, Baker & Taylor (B&T), one of the primary vendors for books and media to libraries, suddenly announced their intended closure by the end of 2025. B&T had been experiencing internal business issues for many months, so this was not unexpected news for many libraries, and Timberland had already moved away from B&T for many items, including Lucky Day books and other high demand titles.
While B&T was not Timberland’s primary vendor, the sudden closure of B&T has had a spillover effect on our other main book vendors as they try to absorb the massive influx of new orders from other libraries. This has caused a slowdown to the entire library materials ordering ecosystem. These vendors assure us that they have been scaling up their infrastructure to accommodate the increase in orders and believe that they will be back to normal delivery times soon.
We have seen some improvement in the last month or so, but there are still significant delays in some orders. While we were still getting many titles before their publication dates in early 2025 (so we could catalog and put these out to delivery to you on the publication date), this has become a rare occurrence. Our vendors have informed us that this is a combination of their not receiving books from publishers as early as they used to and the inability so far to scale up in pre-processing and shipping.
While we wait for delivery times to improve, TRL staff have been taking steps to alleviate the wait times and get material to our patrons as quickly as possible. Like many libraries, TRL typically receives material that is "pre-processed" by vendors, meaning that the mylar jackets, barcodes and RFID tags have already been applied to the items, saving library staff time one the materials arrive. While we are no longer set up to do mass processing, we have recently ordered unprocessed material and processed the items in-house as fast as possible. Additionally, we have contracted with additional vendors to spread out some of our orders and have worked with our primary vendor to facilitate some "rush" orders for high-demand items.
We know that the increased wait time for new materials has been frustrating. As the library world adjusts to a changing landscape, TRL Collections staff are working hard to continue streamlining our internal processes to get material into the hands of our users as soon as possible. We truly appreciate your support and patience.
Additional Sources:
Libraries Look to Fill the Gap Left by Baker & Taylor
“Books are going to take longer to get to libraries”: What Baker & Taylor’s Demise Means for Comics
