Wiley EAL license

["Hulbert, Linda A." <LAHULBERT@stthomas.edu>]

Dear license gurus (please excuse the duplicate postings)

Another company is looking at the Elsevier model and using it. 
Unfortunately, unlike Elsevier where a library might get more 
content than they could pay for and unlike Elsevier which does 
not require that a library participate, Wiley is requiring all 
multi-site libraries to have a no-cancellation, minimum life time 
spend.  Add insult to injury, we are not a multi-site library by 
any other vendor's definition!  But Wiley has designated us so. 
Without recourse.

So, I am sending this letter to many, many people at Wiley and in 
the library community. Please, help resist these kinds of 
publisher practices.

*****

I am writing to you today in your capacity as someone concerned 
with [higher education, customer service] at John Wiley and Sons.

Wiley provides an EAL license which has three major features: two 
year agreement, a guaranteed minimum spend (no cancellations 
without adding titles) (ala Elsevier) and, for that 'lock-in,' 
libraries will have a cap on the annual inflationary increases. 
Wiley requires multi-site libraries - which they have declared we 
are - enter into an EAL license for electronic journal content.

We have two problems with this rigid requirement:

1.     Wiley is now treating my university as a multi-campus 
university. Let me assure you that all other vendors treat us a 
single site because, while we have libraries in Minneapolis and 
St. Paul, we have a single IP address, single president, and a 
single Accounts Payable for all campuses (including Rome which 
has 4 seminarians studying abroad!).

2.     The EAL license is required for all online journal content 
we purchase from Wiley/Blackwell in 2010. Currently, our 
online-only spend is about $3,000, our print +online is over 
$33,000, and our total spend is about $66,000 for journal content 
with Wiley.  What does that mean for the University of St. 
Thomas?  We would not be able to cancel - i.e. lower our 
'current' spend. That means that as tuition dollars dry up, as 
the university's contribution to the libraries shrink, we cannot 
cancel titles in the Wiley contract. It's ironic that while we 
would be locked into a multi-year contract during these 
incredibly unpredictable and difficult financial times, Wiley 
could change their title list at will - buying or selling titles 
as the market dictates.

We have spoken with your representative, Diane Conroy, and there 
are no alternatives IF we want online journal content from Wiley. 
She is adamant.

Hence, our only option is to cancel all of our online content. I 
assume that is not Wiley's goal but the only one we see available 
to us since we cannot agree to a multi-year, dollar spend 
commitment.  We will cancel what we can - I can see about $30,000 
in cancellations (27 titles) without too much pain. We will 
purchase print-only in the cases where we have had print +online 
and we will cancel our online-only and move back to print-only. 
As we all know, even good content that is print-only will become 
marginalized by our users and as it does, we'll easily be able to 
justify canceling the remaining print titles. And, of course, we 
will not be purchasing new journal content from Wiley.

When September comes, if we have no agreement with Wiley for 2010 
permitting cancellation and permitting single year subscriptions, 
we will have to take these draconian steps.

I will be sharing this letter with the Wiley board of directors, 
others in Wiley management, the serials community, the licensing 
community and other colleagues in the library community.

Thank you for your attention.

Sincerely,


CC:  Warren J. Baker, President
              California Polytechnic State University
Bonnie Lieberman,
   Senior Vice-President for Higher Education
   John Wiley and Sons
Clifford Kline, Senior Vice-President
   Customer Service and Distribution
   John Wiley and Sons

***************************************
Linda Hulbert, Associate Director
       Collection Management and Services
O'Shaughnessy-Frey Library #5004
University of Saint Thomas