RE: New strategy at NY Times and libraries

["T Scott Plutchak" <tscott@uab.edu>]

Certainly it will.  People _do_ need the library less.

Related comments here:
http://tscott.typepad.com/tsp/2007/09/valuing-librari.html

Scott

T. Scott Plutchak
Director, Lister Hill Library of the Health Sciences
University of Alabama at Birmingham
tscott@uab.edu

-----Original Message-----
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of B.G. Sloan
Sent: Wednesday, September 19, 2007 5:55 PM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Re: New strategy at NY Times and libraries

I believe we will be seeing more publishers experimenting with 
doing away with subscription fees in favor of advertising 
revenues. Times Select met the NYT expectations, and was bringing 
in $10 million annually in subscription fees. The NYT thinks the 
upside from ad revenues will be greater. Granted, the NYT is not 
a scholarly journal, but I think this move will have a lot of 
people in the publishing industry sitting up and taking notice.

I may have mentioned this before, but if this sort of trend 
continues will it gradualy begin to marginalize the library, bit 
by bit? In other words, if more information becomes available 
freely will that lead people to think they need the library less?

Bernie Sloan

_________________________

Ann Okerson <ann.okerson@yale.edu> wrote:

Readers,

I forwarded a little while ago a piece of today's longer article 
in the New York Times about their decision to stop charging for 
archives and some current materials. I believe libraries have 
paid a significant sum of money for the back issues that will now 
be available for free (e.g., before 1923). Should we now be 
dropping out of those arrangements?

This article may also be of interest in our thread about business 
models to sustain publishing, even though the item at issue here 
is a newspaper rather than a specifically scholarly journal or 
database.

Ann Okerson/Yale