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Repurchasing backfile information from ISI 

At UCLA we too evaluated the ISI Web of Science for purchase.  We felt it
was a very good product - much better than the CD ROM.  The few faculty
who also looked at it were quite enthusiastic.  However, we decided to
pass even though we were offered substantial "discounts".  The bottom line
was that the product was way too expensive just as a database, and then
when you factor in the fact that we had already paid substantial money for
this data previously, the price became outrageous.  We have also stopped
buying the 5 year cums.  Our serials budgets no longer support such
egregious pricing. 

Perhaps if all major universitites in the country said no to this pricing,
the pricing would eventually become more realistic and reflective of
actual costs as opposed to rampant profits. 

Barbara Schader
Head, Collection Development
UCLA Biomedical Library


On Tue, 9 Dec 1997 00:49:19 -0500 (EST) Dennis Dillon 
<dillon@mail.utexas.edu> wrote:
> We recently spent two months evaluating and discussing a possible purchase
> of the ISI Web of Science.  This involved more than one committee and some
> significant soul searching before we decided not to license it at this
> time. 
> 
> One of the factors in our decision to turn down this subscription
> opportunity was that we determined we had spent over $250,000 in the last
> seven years for print and CD-ROM access to this information, and that if
> we licensed the Web of Science, we would have to spend an additional 6
> figure dollar amount to gain access to this same information once again,
> albeit reformated for the web. 
> 
> We did like the product, but we had some philosophical objections to
> spending taxpayer dollars to purchase the same information from the same
> company, three times in the past several years.  In light of tight budgets
> and taxpayer suspicion of higher education priorites -- there were several
> unflattering headlines that we could imagine appearing in the state
> newspapers that we simply didn't want to take a chance on reading. 
> 
> We are not against paying reasonble fees associated with reformatting data
> for web access and have done so on occassion - but substantial charges to
> access backfile information have not been an issue with 95% of the other
> vendors marketing web data that we deal with. 
> 
> I am wondering how other libraries evaluate these types of purchases.  If
> there are substantial backfile charges involved for web access to
> information that you have been paying for for years, how does this factor
> into your decision making? 
> 
> --Dennis Dillon 
> Head, Collections and Information Resources 
> The University of Texas at Austin


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