Re: PDA Sales: (was: Interview with Springer's Derk Haank)

[Rick Anderson <rick.anderson@utah.edu>]

> While I'm thinking about it, if patron-driven purchasing is an 
> alternative to book 'big deals', then surely the same could be 
> true for journals? Patron-driven purchasing article-by-article 
> (and for that matter, chapter-by-chapter) anyone?

That's exactly right.  A journal subscription makes no sense, 
really. It's just a small version of the Big Deal -- you buy a 
whole bunch of stuff you don't need because it's bundled together 
with the stuff you do. Article-by-article purchasing is a much 
more rational way of acquiring journal content, and only two 
things are stopping libraries (or my library, anyway) from 
heading in that direction:

1. Journal publishers not offering per-article purchase as an
    option

2. Journal publishers pricing individual articles at punitive
    levels

As our budgets continue to get tighter -- and they will keep 
getting tighter for the foreseeable future -- it's going to get 
harder and harder to justify buying articles we don't want.  I 
think title-level journal acquisition is probably on the way out.

As for chapter-by-chapter purchasing of book content: why not? 
Given the way books are very often used in libraries, it would be 
great if we had the option of purchasing individual chapters (or 
even pages) as well as buying the whole thing.

Rick Anderson
Assoc. Dir. for Scholarly Resources & Collections
Marriott Library
Univ. of Utah
rick.anderson@utah.edu