RE: Chuck Hamaker/Ebsco Full-Text Databases Post

["Hamaker, Chuck" <cahamake@email.uncc.edu>]

Janet, 

MIT journals are an example of a press that has expanded its journals list
for which I think we(libraries) owe you a great debt of appreciation.
Before SPARC you were doing and continue to do what we need in this
business-providing viable alternatives in fields that had been dominated
by commercial presses.

And MIT press is benefiting from the environment where libraries are
picking new subscriptions. MIT's success with new titles, with competing
successfully with some of the large commercial presses is a sign that
there is flexibilty in the system,and a real need for what you have been
doing. Focusing on the negative end of the shift (ie. I lost some paper
subscriptions) seems to me less than half the story given the successes
MIT Journals have created over the last decade. Chuck Hamaker

-----Original Message-----
From: Janet Fisher [mailto:jfisher@MIT.EDU]
Sent: Wednesday, March 21, 2001 6:47 PM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Chuck Hamaker/Ebsco Full-Text Databases Post


In response to Chuck Hamaker's post about full-text databases and their
impact on print subscriptions, I would like to say I wish what he suggests
is happening is actually happening. In fact, MIT Press has done telephone
follow-up with non-renewed library subscribers to some of our oldest,
established, highly-cited journals, and we have definitely had responses
indicating that librarians had cancelled because of the journal's
availability in a full-text database. Some database products were even
named specifically. As a result, we are definitely reviewing whether we
want to remain in these types of products.

Janet Fisher
Associate Director for Journals Publishing
The MIT Press