More Info on UC's Elsevier deal

[Ann Okerson <aokerson@pantheon.yale.edu>]

A resourceful reporter (Clifton B. Parker) from UC Davis's "Dateline"  
(1/6/04) managed to get the following line on the Elsevier story in an
article entitled "UC closes deal with scholarly publisher"...

The story appeared only in Dateline's printed newsletter and so is not
available online:

"UC officials close to library acquisitions said that the new contract was
part of a broader collective strategy by the UC libraries to curtail their
expenditures on Elsevier journals while minimizing impacts on faculty
access.

The contract provides online systemwide access to some 1,200 Elsevier
journal titles. It also includes a single print copy of each of those
titles to be managed for the system in a regional library facility. The
existence of this so-called print archive has given campus libraries
confidence that they can cancel their own locally managed print
subscriptions for Elsevier journals without depriving access to print to
those few UC faculty who may yet require it.

The net result is that the UC libraries will spend 25 percent less on
Elsevier subscriptions in 2004 than they did in 2003 ($7.7 million in 2004
as opposed to $10.3 million in 2003).

The subscription cost associated with the systemwide deal for online
content accounts for a large part of the savings. An even larger part
comes from the fact that the libraries have contained local print
subscriptions to $400,000 in 2004 (down from $2.3 million in 2003)."

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