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

[Laval Hunsucker <amoinsde@yahoo.com>]

The Mendel instance is a classic one, but others of such a sort, 
less spectacular, albeit significantly, are legion. One is not 
inclined to envy researchers located in Austin in the coming 
years, decades and generations


- Laval Hunsucker
    Breukelen, Nederland


----- Original Message ----
From: Heather Morrison <hgmorris@sfu.ca>
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Sent: Tue, April 20, 2010 11:54:33 PM
Subject: Re: Usage-based pricing (was ebooks in libraries a thorny problem)

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