The Need for EBSM®

There were two main imperatives which led to the development of the methodology.

1 From the perspective of a librarian with extensive experience of book purchase and stock editing, a recognition that 'experience' is NOT enough. Lack of access to robust detailed evidence about what constitutes local demand leads to substantial waste in stock purchase - waste that can amount to many thousands of pounds over the years, buying books that no-one wants to read, and neglecting to buy enough of the sort of books which users are falling over themselves to borrow.
2 A parallel realisation that stock movement is essential to maximise use of existing stock - on return visits to the Library, customers want to see titles that they haven't seen before. However existing tools to facilitate such movement are sadly clumsy and inefficient.
3         Ongoing change in the culture of Local Authorities, where all services are being required to be more performance and market orientated - to conform with the government change agenda.

Taken together it is clear that there was a need to take a fundamentally different approach to stock management, and more importantly stock performance improvement.

The start point for the development of EBSM was a famous quotation from the Librarian's guru S.R. Ranganathan:

          "Books are for USE".

Everything purchased should have the ultimate goal of being used so often that it wears out, and librarians can move towards achieving this by accessing evidence of previous use of existing stock and using it as a form of proxy consultation.