Re: Discussing pricing in public (RE: Response from Ted Bergstrom to Ann Okerson)

["Dr Joseph D. Reilly" <jreilly@wu.ac.th>]

Rick, I agree.  Short of a binding agreement, which would prove difficult
to hold up in court anyway, we have a duty to each other to discuss
pricing.  Why should we continue to support vendor pricing nonsense when
it is coming out of our often limited budgets?  That's their problem, not
ours.  We should publically discuss horrible practices like those found in
some of the Factiva clauses (check out their termination clauses), the
built-in margins that almost every sales representative of every vendor
has when s/he walks into your office (these margins are OUR bargaining
area, we should know about them and use them), etc.

The people truly prohibited from sharing pricing data are the employees of
vendors--they all sign non-disclosure agreements that more or less
instruct them to not share company secrets with competitors, and not to
accept jobs with competitors.  Even these are not that strong, legally
speaking.  But for us, the customers, we can usually talk about pricing as
much as we want.  It's not only our right, it is our duty.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Rick Anderson" <rickand@unr.edu>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Thursday, November 17, 2005 5:51 AM
Subject: Discussing pricing in public (RE: Response from Ted Bergstrom 
to Ann Okerson)

>> I was making the point for the sake of participants in this list
>> serve--and Ann especially, whose neck is on the line. You should not
>> discuss pricing on any listserve, on any subject. If you doubt me, ask
>> your attorney.

> Not having an attorney handy, I'd be interested to know why Peter thinks
> the public discussion of pricing is such a bad idea (absent a binding
> agreement not to do so).
>
> ----
> Rick Anderson
> Dir. of Resource Acquisition
> University of Nevada, Reno Libraries
> rickand@unr.edu