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If you are uncertain where to find help at Brodart, start by emailing or calling one of the groups below:
McNaughton Products & Services
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Phone: (800) 474-9816
Email: support@brodart.com
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CUSTOMER SERVICE
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Phone: (800) 474-9802
Email: mcnaughton@brodart.com
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About McNaughton
The concept of leasing books to libraries actually began as a rental program through drugstores over 50 years ago. We moved into the library market through an agreement between our company's founder Arthur Brody, and Nelson McNaughton. Upon the retirement of Nelson McNaughton, the McNaughton program became a division of Brodart Books & Services.
We offer popular reading plans for lease or purchase. Each plan is credited with a monthly allowance of books or points. Unlike the allowance you received for doing chores while growing up, this allowance is "spent" by ordering books. The number of allowance used for a particular book is based on the publisher's list price.
Each plan begins with a rotating collection of popular and best-selling books. New books are chosen monthly from our annotated catalogs. Periodic returns and/or purchases of leased books keeps the collection up to date for your patrons. You decide which books to return, and what to purchase to build your permanent collection.
McNaughton can help you establish a popular reading plan, enhance an existing collection, or reduce your reserve list with multiple copies of high demand books.
When we made the move from drugstores to libraries we made the commitment to develop the best popular reading programs for the library market. The commitment is the same today as it was then, and the proof can be found in over 3,000 library locations in North America, Australia, and military installations throughout the world.
A Short History of McNaughton
Nelson McNaughton founded and ran a commercial lending library, distributing his books through a variety of retailers. Day rates to customers were a nickel a day, divided between the storekeeper and McNaughton. He had a considerable number of retail lenders but struggled to make a profit. All his books were covered with Brodart book covers, a fact that protected the books and would later play a significant role in the company he ran.
Bankruptcies posed a particular problem for McNaughton. In order to recover books when a retailer when out of business, the company needed to know a problem had developed with the retailer and then had to take quick action. During one such situation, in West Virginia, a small drugstore had become insolvent. McNaughton arrived to discover his books were about to be auctioned. He complained and was told to remove his books or forfeit them. But the entrepreneur had no truck to cart the books away so he asked the local library to store the inventory for him.
As it turned out, the library hadn't been able to afford new books for some time and was pleased to get a few. The librarian asked if she could lend the titles and offered to collect the drugstore's books that were still in circulation. The library would collect any money it could and McNaughton would permit book loans, free.
A month later, McNaughton found that the receipts from the drugstore's customers were amazingly high. He concluded that storekeepers had been cheating him but that librarians were honest. The library's circulation was amazingly high too.
Eventually, the businessman was prepared to remove his books from the library. But they were in great demand. So a deal was struck where the library collected lending fees and took a commission on the service. In short order, word spread around West Virginia about this remarkable new program, a commercial lending library in a public library. In no time at all, McNaughton had 13 library accounts.
But the struggling businessman didn't have the funds to stock these new accounts. His book supplier had stopped shipping him books so he approach Arthur Brody, his book cover supplier. "What do you think of this idea?" McNaughton asked. Brody thought it was fantastic. Shortly thereafter, McNaughton called to say he was about to go out of business himself. In response, Brody guaranteed payment to McNaughton's supplier, Baker & Taylor.
As a result, McNaughton and Brody became 50/50 partners in the library part of the business. It wasn't long before it was the only business the company pursued. When Nelson retired, McNaughton became a division of Brodart. The line has grown every year since, eliminating a library's challenge in selecting high-demand, current titles. What's more, the leasing solution assures libraries that they aren't making permanent commitments to temporarily popular titles.
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