Re: Nature Questions

[Kerry Kresse <kkresse@library.wisc.edu>]

With all due respect, how can transferring costs from cancelled individual
subscriptions to libraries be fair for libraries and their users?  It's a
great deal for the person who cancels their subscription, but libraries
with inflexible budgets will be hard pressed to absorb the costs.  I am
still not convinced that Nature subscribers will cancel their
subscriptions in hordes once it's available online.  If we're forced to
pay more for a resource to compensate for cancelled personal subscriptions
then it means that there will be other things we cannot afford to buy for
our users.  The library loses, the user loses.

I understand that library rates are higher because of multiple uses by
many patrons, but to charge us more because the personal subscriptions are
lost puts libraries in the difficult position we are in today.  I suspect
there are many individual subscriptions out there that are supported by
grant money or other sources.  If the monies used to support these
cancelled individual subscriptions were somehow transferred into the
library budgets that would be one thing, but they're not.

I am constantly amazed at people who think that libraries have magical
pots of money or no budgetary constraints.  Witness Albert Henderson's
recent opinion piece ("The Big Lie"
http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/current_issue/henderson/index.html),
mentioned in this listserv already.  He seems to think that libraries can
control the size of their own budgets and obtain whatever amount of money
that they need from their funding sources.  That's ridiculous.  Money is
not an unlimited resource.  Some states fund their universities better
than others. Some universities fund their libraries better than others.  
To think that library budgets can keep absorbing gigantic increases is
completely wrong.  I have spent twenty years trying to build collections
wherever I have worked, but all I have really become successful at is
slashing journal collections to keep within budget restrictions.  And I'm
not happy about it.

Kerry L. Kresse, Physics Librarian     kkresse@library.wisc.edu
Physics Library,    University of Wisconsin -- Madison
1150 University Avenue,   Madison, WI  USA  53706
Office:  (608) 262-8696;  Physics Library:  (608) 262-9500
http://www.library.wisc.edu/libraries/Physics/

___  

"Dr. Alan M. Edelson" wrote:

> Anderson's suggestion makes the most sense of all those I've read thus far
> regarding the Nature imbroglio: they should estimate the negative impact
> on their revenues resulting from permitting immediate full online access
> by libraries, and build that loss into a rate increase for institutional
> subscriptions. After all, the long accepted practice of charging higher
> institutional rates is based on the theory of multiple use which also
> tends to reduce individual subscriptions. This would seem the most logical
> and least painful solution for all concerned---provided, of course, that
> the calculations are done in a reasonable and fair manner.  To this end, I
> would urge that the institutional rate increases be phased in over several
> years while assessing what, if any, damage is caused to Nature's
> individual subscription revenue, lest the calculations exaggerate this
> damage. By the way, Nature's management ought to weigh very seriously the
> damage this ongoing dispute is causing to the prestige and reputation of
> their publication. Any hope that by putting their heads in the sands and
> waiting for the storm to pass is likely to prove foolish in the extreme.
>
> Alan M. Edelson