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Re: Perpetual Access
In an earlier note, Greg McGowan asks: "I wonder if anyone has yet, or will in the future, do a cost/benefit analysis of retaining the data from electronic subscriptions." I've often wondered about the costs/benefits of retaining data from cancelled electronic licenses. We make comparisons to the print world, saying that electronic subscriptions should be analagous to paper subscriptions. While I believe that libraries should have the option of retaining data once a license/subscription ends (just as with print subscriptions), the analogy ends there. With a cancelled print subscription, the library doesn't have to do anything special to maintain access: the catalog record is already there, the serials holdings info is already there, and the bound volumes are already sitting on the shelves, along with the rest of the library's print materials. While some work needs to be done to indicate the title has been cancelled, etc., access to the information in those journals is maintained with relatively little overhead. It's not the same with some electronic subscriptions. In many cases, some sort of specific access path must be maintained if the data are to be accessible. For example, Paul Sanz noted that NewsBank offers a "disc (or tape at extra cost) as an option with the new online InfoWeb versions." It would seem that there might be a higher relative overhead to maintaining access to a cancelled electronic subscription, as opposed to a cancelled print subscription. At what point do the overhead costs of maintaining access to a cancelled electronic subscription stop making sense from a cost/benefit perspective, especially as the currency of the data diminishes with each passing day? As I noted earlier, the costs of maintaining access to cancelled print journals can be incidental.......the costs of main- taining access to cancelled electronic subscriptions could be significantly greater. Just wondering if anyone has grappled with this..... Bernie Sloan ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Bernie Sloan Senior Library Information Systems Consultant University of Illinois Office for Planning & Budgeting 338 Henry Administration Building 506 S. Wright Street Urbana, IL 61801 Phone: 217-333-4895 Fax: 217-333-6355 e-mail: bernies@uillinois.edu
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