WiLS November 2014 Vendor Partner Interview: Kristen Stauffer, IGI Global

At WiLS, we want to bring valuable information to our library partners, including information about the missions and big ideas of the vendors they may already do business with.  Each month, WiLS will interview a vendor partner in order to bridge the gap and open the door to valuable collaborations.  This month, we are delighted to share insights from Kristen Stauffer, Director of Electronic Resources & Library Relations at IGI Global, a newly added WiLS vendor partner!

If you have any questions about this interview, or would like to suggest a vendor partner for us to interview in the future, contact Andrea Coffin at or 414-979-9457.

Tell us about your company’s background.

Founded in 1988, IGI Global, headquartered in Hershey, Pennsylvania (USA), is a leading international academic publisher of more than 2,600 reference publications, including authored and edited monographs, case books, proceedings, teaching cases, and major reference works such as encyclopedias, handbooks of research, dictionaries, and multi-volume book collections; more than 150 scholarly journals; and several online databases. IGI Global’s high-quality scholarly publications are aimed at providing research communities, industry practitioners, professionals, corporations, and academic research libraries with reference publications on emerging innovations in diverse fields.

Over the course of the last several years, IGI Global has substantially expanded its holdings to include titles encompassing all areas of academic research, including, but not limited to: business, computer science, education, engineering, environmental science, communications, public policy, psychology, healthcare, as well as the social sciences and humanities, and not just the information science and technology focus IGI Global has come to be known for during the past 26+ years. Also, every single title published by IGI Global is available in both print and electronic format, offering quite a bit of flexibility to libraries.

Inside IGI Global’s latest product catalogs, you will find a variety of scholarly research publications – from all corners of the globe and across many different disciplines.

Why do you, personally, choose to work with libraries?

Librarians are some of my favorite people. They’re smart and interesting, and they often work really hard to make the places they work in – whether that’s public, academic, private, etc. – a knowledge haven. When I was really young, I used to take trips to the library weekly with my mom and my sister – and we’d leave with a canvas bag full of new books to read each week. When you love reading that much and grow up in that sort of environment, it can lead to working in the library and publishing industry full-time. So, working with libraries and librarians is something I’ve always enjoyed.

What do you like to know about the libraries you work with? What helps you better understand their needs?

I like to know pretty much anything and everything. Every library we work with seems to do things differently from another, so understanding their unique needs in addition to needs or issues that are more industry-wide is always helpful. It’s always great to learn how students are engaging with library materials, how librarians are improving discoverability or using discovery services, their thoughts on open access, initiatives they’re making to connect with their communities, how they work to prevent abuse of the electronic content in their catalogs, etc. All of this helps us improve our services and our user experience.

What big ideas are being worked on at your company? What problems are being solved?

We understand that in today’s society the librarian’s role is extremely crucial, especially with the circumstances of the present economy where budgets are significantly tightening and yet the scope and demand for content continues to grow. So we’re happy to make sure we’re partnering with consortia, like WiLS, to provide special discounts and offers to support librarians and research communities in finding the right materials for their academic needs.

One current promotion I’m happy to mention is that IGI Global is offering free lifetime (perpetual) e-access for any print book or journal subscription purchased directly through IGI Global’s Online Bookstore or through a distributor (or a partner, like WiLS!). Both institutions and individuals are eligible for this free lifetime (perpetual) electronic access, which will be fulfilled through our InfoSci® platform. The InfoSci® platform is IGI Global’s single, centralized, and personalized gateway for institutions. All IGI Global’s electronic content, including individual e-books, e-journals, and our premier research databases, is available through this state-of-the-art, XML-powered platform and search engine. Some features of our platform include: unlimited simultaneous access 24/7 with no limitations, full-text XML/HTML and PDF viewing options, liberal DRM, no fees whatsoever for any services (including hosting, MARC records, COUNTER reports, archiving, platform maintenance, etc.), and many more.

At IGI Global, we also intend to further expand our book and journal portfolio to include even more titles within all areas of academic research, especially in the fields of business, engineering, medicine, law, as well as the social sciences. While we were originally established as a publishing house focused predominately on the utilization and management of information science and technology, and do intend to continue to publish in those areas, we also plan to aggressively branch out into more diverse areas beyond an exclusive IT focus. To further elaborate, most of our titles in the past purely focused on the utilization and management of IT, specifically the application of systems and software, and now our titles are integrating more practical research in a wide range of disciplines/fields, with topics such as project management techniques, human interaction (social considerations), research methods, knowledge development and management, etc.

We have a helpful overview available on the IGI Global website with a full overview of IGI Global’s content expansion here.

Oh, and one last thing – we’re exploring app-territory and we’re interested in hearing what librarians have to say about our new free InfoSci®-Dictionary mobile application! As a mobile version of IGI Global’s popular InfoSci®-Dictionary database, users can search over 68,000 terms & definitions that were originally published within IGI Global publications. Check it out on the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store.

How can librarians become partners in product or training development?

That’s a very good question!

Take us up on free trials to our database collections! It can’t hurt, and a free trial is a good way to evaluate IGI Global content for your institution.

Also, we appreciate when librarians are interested in training sessions and organizing sessions among fellow staff, faculty, and students. We offer free online trainings of our InfoSci® platform and can schedule those at any time. I really recommend training when signing up for a trial too, because that is the best way to get a sense of IGI Global’s advanced platform and what we can offer your institution’s research community.

Several of the conferences we’ve attended recently have focused on the transition of the library from a place of research to a place of resources – meaning that libraries today often offer much more than what they’ve traditionally been known for. The role of libraries is changing and we’re glad to facilitate and support that change in the community too.

Do you have anything else you’d like to share here?

We’re thrilled to be working with WiLS as a new vendor partner! IGI Global is happy to provide professionals, practitioners, students, and educators the scholarly resources they need for advancing discovery and problem solving, and we look forward to offering special discounts and offers to WiLS members in the coming year.

Thanks for thinking of us for this vendor profile and interview.