Negotiate like an MBA: How to conduct principled negotiations for library resources

May 17-19, 2022

11:00 am – 1:00 pm (Central)

This workshop is hosted live over three consecutive days. Course Instructor asks that you reserve the listed hours for both live instruction and course exercises.

$175/ single ticket, $131/ group ticket 

The art of negotiation is an important skill set for information professionals who often lack formalized training. Participants in this workshop will learn a framework that enables effective negotiation preparation as well as develop and practice new skills and strategies around conducting principled negotiations with external partners.

Over three sessions, participants will learn key concepts and strategies such as BATNA (Best Alternative to Negotiated Agreement) and ZOPA (Zone of Possible Agreement) which are useful in planning offers and counteroffers. Strategies around how to prepare when you have little time, hear the word no, and experience poor behavior mid-negotiation will be also be discussed. Participants will be provided case studies to practice negotiation preparation, and will have the opportunity to execute three negotiations, one on negotiating a job offer and two based on negotiating electronic resources. In the two e-resource negotiations, everyone will have the chance to be either the library or the vendor. 

Participants should expect to do about an hour of homework before the second and third sessions to study the assigned case study and prepare to negotiate at the beginning of sessions 2 and 3.

Following the workshop, participants will be able to: 

• conduct principled negotiations for electronic resources with external partners.
• analyze data and information to prepare for and execute negotiations.
• reflect upon future negotiation experiences and compare to best practices in order to improve over time.

AUDIENCE LEVEL: Beginner/ Foundational

This course does not require background knowledge of the topic. This is appropriate for a practitioner new to eresources topics or as an introduction to a new topic.

PARTICIPATION:

Instructors will use a mixture of lecture, discussion, polling, and small group breakouts during the workshop. Workshop attendees will be provided negotiation scenarios to review, plan, and then practice negotiation skills. Attendees should expect to do about an hour of homework before the second and third sessions in order to best participate.

COURSE OUTLINE:

To be shared with registered course attendees prior to course start date.

Meet Your Course Instructors

Mahasin Ameen, MLS

Mahasin Ameen currently serves as the Teaching and Learning Librarian for IUPUI and works as liaison to the School of Social Work and the School of Informatics and Computing. She also serves as an adjunct lecturer to the department of library and information science. Her research interests include library neutrality, queer issues in librarianship, and exploring the impact of intergenerational librarianship. Before joining IUPUI University Library Mahasin worked for the Indianapolis Public Library where she worked on negotiating contracts, bids, and purchasing.

Katharine V. Macy, MBA, MLIS

Katharine V. Macy is the Collection Assessment Librarian at Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis. For the past several years she has been writing and presenting on how libraries can create relative bargaining power in vendor negotiations as well as providing negotiation education to academic libraries, most recently in the Negotiation 101 and 201 series sponsored by ACRL and SPARC in 2021. In addition to her MLIS from the University of Washington, she has an MBA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and brings experience of preparing and executing negotiations from both sides of the table from the private sector.