RE: charge for CD-ROM site licensing

[Harvey Brenneise <HBrenne@MPHI.org>]

Yes, I think CD-ROM is bad also, and would like to find solutions that can
be networked from a server.  I know that HighWire Press has helped some
publishers get at least some of their backfiles online.

I don't know which publishers see their backfiles as a potential revenue
source to "milk" (like the American Medical Association) and which would
just like to get the project done.  I suspect that some of the latter need
our help as librarians in doing this.

This week I did a project to review what journals we had available online,
and was pleasantly surprised to find that it was about 90%.  I contacted
some of the other editors and asked them what plans they had for
digitizing. Some were in process, and some were clueless.  I believe some
of the latter could use our help, and if they are willing to not want to
make it a revenue source, I believe with either library money or grant
money, some of these backfiles could be brought online quite easily.  
I've seen prices as low as 4 cents a page to create a .pdf file from a
"chopped" print resource.

CD-ROM is old technology and I simply don't want to "go there."

Harvey Brenneise
Michigan Public Health Institute
hbrenne@mphi.org


-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Picerno [mailto:ppicerno@nova.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, January 07, 2003 8:53 PM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: RE: charge for CD-ROM site licensing

I would have to agree that back issues on a CD-ROM are a pretty useless
commodity: they represent cataloging/storage/retrieval/use problems and in
my experience few users will take the time and bother to fiddle with a CD,
and if articles are available through other means such as ILL or document
delivery they will remain the procurement methods of choice for those
seeking a specific article. The publishers would be wiser to establish a
digital archive available on the WWW (which would then justify a site
license), or maybe they should throw their hat into the JSTOR/Project Muse
ring. I would be hard pressed to be able to justify a site license for a
CD-ROM product (which most of us tend to think of as one-time capital
purchases, anyway). But, of course, these are only my opinions, and I'll
be interested to see what other takes on the subject are.

Peter Picerno