Re: universities experiment with paying OA fees

[Karl Bridges <kbridges@uvm.edu>]

I agree with this.  I have no real argument with the idea of 
bundles of books in whatever format.  My problem is that it 
inevitably is the case that those bundles contain a mixture of 
items so I end up buying ten items to get the 3 I really want. 
This seems especially a case with e-book collections.

It just points out that vendors need to develop highly focused 
"bundles" that give the purchaser collections that are focused on 
their needs. I like the idea of thematic bundles.

There needs to be an approach, call it "just in time bundling", 
where bundles can be quickly customized to the needs, if not of 
single users, at least to the needs of particular classes of 
libraries -- land grant, public, ect. -- which is what I think 
Toby was getting at.


Quoting "Joseph J. Esposito" <espositoj@gmail.com>:

> Toby has this exactly right.  Kudos.  Note the central economic
> issue:  lowering the administrative cost of effecting a sale.
>
> Joe Esposito
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Toby.GREEN@oecd.org
> To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
> Sent: Thursday, June 19, 2008 3:29 PM
> Subject: RE: universities experiment with paying OA fees
>
> Adam,
>
> Thanks for your posting and for introducing me to your platform.
> I've looked at the Lessig books. It's a nice, clean interface. I
> like the clip feature. I didn't like that I can only print off
> pages one-by-one - this would be very tedious if I wanted to read
> a chapter on the train home tonight.
>
> I disagree with your view that selling subscriptions is
> increasingly inefficient. In my experience, it is quite the
> reverse. Selling books by the one, whether in print or online, is
> inefficient.
>
> Think about the costs involved in deciding to buy a book on a
> one-by-one basis and then the transaction costs involved in
> making the purchase. According to ALA data from around 2000, the
> administrative cost of buying a single printed book is around
> $50. I guess it might be a little lower for a digital copy today,
> for the sake of argument let's say it is half - that's still $25
> per book. The administrative cost of subscribing to a multi-issue
> print journal was around $75 c.2000, it's probably lower for
> online-only journals, but for the sake of argument, let's stick
> with $75.
>

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