404 Media: This story was reported with support from the MuckRock foundation. “One of the largest distributors of print books for libraries is winding down operations by the end of the year, a huge disruption to public libraries across the country, some of which are warning their communities the shut down will limit their ability to lend books. “You might notice some delays as we (and more than 6,000 other libraries) transition to new wholesalers,” the Jacksonville Public Library told its community in a Facebook post. “We’re keeping a close eye on things and doing everything we can to minimize any wait times.” The libraries that do business with the distributor learned about the shut down earlier this month via Reddit. Upon learning of her company’s closure, Jennifer Kennedy, a customer services account manager with Baker & Taylor, broke the news on October 6 on r/Libraries Reddit community. “I just wanted the libraries to know,” Kennedy told 404 Media. “I didn’t want them to be held hostage waiting for books that would never come. I respect them too much for all this nonsense.” Kennedy’s post prompted other current and former B&T [Baker & Taylor] employees to confirm the announcement and express concern for the competitors about to be inundated with requests from the libraries who would be scrambling for new suppliers. Baker & Taylor has been in the book business just short of 200 years. Its primary focus was distributing physical copies of books to public libraries. The company also provided librarians with tools that helped them do their jobs more effectively related to collection development and processing. But the company has spent decades being acquired by and divested from private equity firms, served as a revolving door for senior leadership, and was sued by a competitor earlier this year for alleged data misuse and was almost acquired again in September, this time by a distributor that works with mass-market retailers like Walmart and Target. That deal fell through. On October 7, Publishers Weekly reported B&T let go of more than 500 employees the day the internal announcement was made. At least one law firm is currently investigating B&T for allegedly violating the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act, and it took the company weeks to let account holders know. Since the internal announcement, Kennedy says customer service staff at B&T have not received guidance on how to respond to inquiries from libraries, leaving them on the frontline and in the dark on issues ranging from whether existing orders would be fulfilled to securing refunds for materials they may have already paid for. “Some libraries didn’t realize we are much closed as of right now,” Kennedy added. B&T did not respond when asked for comment.

Kennedy has been with B&T for 16 years. At a time when it’s uncommon to remain with one company more than a few years, that’s exactly what many of B&T’s employees have been able to do, until now. The same was true of the libraries who did business with them. Andrew Harant, director of Cuyahoga Falls Library had to consider the library’s longstanding business relationship with the company against the roughly 20 percent of books the library had ordered from the beginning of the year they had never received. “For us, that was about 1,500 items,” which Harant told 404 Media that for a small library is a lot of books they were ordering and not receiving…”