CINCINNATI — Baker & Taylor, one of the country's largest book vendors, is shutting down after nearly 200 years due to financial struggles, leaving libraries nationwide facing inventory delays and forced to find new suppliers.
The company's closure, which comes after a failed acquisition deal, is already creating ripple effects for local libraries that relied on Baker & Taylor for their book collections.
"We were not particularly surprised. We had been having issues with order fulfillment from Baker & Taylor since the spring," said Chantelle Phillips, library director at Campbell County Public Library in Cold Spring.
WATCH: Phillips said she saw this coming months ago, prompting the library's collections department to set up a meeting with its Baker & Taylor representative.
"It made us think that they were having issues getting books from publishers, and so we had decided to go ahead and start moving away from Baker & Taylor," Phillips said.
The Campbell County Public Library Cold Spring branch has since moved to Ingram as its main vendor.
Baker & Taylor's closure also came as no surprise to the Cincinnati Hamilton County Public Library.
"We started noticing that they were having some troubles. They were a bit on the struggle bus," said Holbrook Sample, technology & logistics manager at Cincinnati & Hamilton County Public Library. "We started to switch some of our orders over to a different vendor."
For avid readers, this means it may take longer for libraries to get new books in. However, library staff are working to minimize delays.
"If they're worried about getting a particular title in, just come in and talk to us about it," Phillips said. "We'll do our best to get all the items in as quickly as possible."
