Re: Usage-based pricing (was ebooks in libraries a thorny problem)

[Heather Morrison <hgmorris@sfu.ca>]

Dennis Dillon wrote:

We believe that there is ample room in the market for fewer books 
to be purchased on speculation, and for more publisher revenue to 
be generated by usage-based pricing, patron-driven selection, and 
print- on-demand options. Moving to usage-based pricing and 
patron-driven selection means publishers and librarians have to 
rethink some paradigms and be more in tune with their readers, 
but that is not necessarily a bad thing.

Comment:

As Dillon reports, the University of Texas is using usage-based 
pricing along with other models, including careful selection by 
subject specialists. Patron-driven selection and print-on-demand 
are not the same as usage- based pricing.

Question:

Between the time Mendel worked out the basics of heredity and 
people began to pay attention to this work, there was about a 
century's gap. If every library was purchasing on the basis of 
demand, would this work have been lost?

Heather Morrison, MLIS
The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com