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

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

> Article-by-article purchasing, and chapter-by-chapter 
> purchasing, are already available in the marketplace through 
> such services as offered by the CCC.

True -- for many journals but not all of them, and not at prices 
that can be sustained by a research library.  (And also, in many 
cases, not with instant delivery.)

What needs to happen is something very much like the Big Deal, 
except without up-front payment and with very low per-article 
charges.  I realize that will sound unreasonable to journal 
publishers whose business models are built on a longstanding 
ability to sell massive amounts of material that their customers 
don't actually want, but libraries simply don't have the ability 
to buy that way anymore. Totally apart from the fundamental 
ridiculousness of the model, the money is simply no longer there.

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