RE: Price discrimination for academic subscriptions (discussion)

[Phil Davis <pmd8@cornell.edu>]

Academia has always been an elitist market (this is why many parents in
the United States are willing to pay $30-$40K per year to send their
children to the most prestigious schools).  Even in socialized countries,
where their governments treat higher education as a public good and
tuition is either free or highly subsidized, schools are far from
homogeneous.  These schools are "elitist" in the because they can attract
the most productive researchers, the majority of the research grants, the
brightest students, and build world-class libraries.  Libraries promote
themselves based on their number of books, periodical subscriptions, and
rare documents.

Price discrimination, where large institutions pay more money for a
subscription than a smaller/poorer/developing country library is both a
good and a bad thing -- depending on who you ask.  For large institutions,
the effect may be a massive reduction in the diversity of resources
available to their communities.  In essence, price discrimination seems to
logically lead to homogeneity of library collections.

This leads me to my question:  will academia as a whole benefit more in a
fixed price market, or a price discriminatory market?  A market that
involves price discrimination -- in theory -- is supposed to work more
efficiently than a fixed price market.  Secondly, what would be the
effects of homogenizing the holdings of the academic libraries?  I realize
again that I'm posing some questions that may not be completely
answerable, but will pose these anyway for discussion.

--Phil Davis