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Repurchasing backfile information from ISI 

We recently spent two months evaluating and discussing a possible purchase
of the ISI Web of Science.  This involved more than one committee and some
significant soul searching before we decided not to license it at this
time. 

One of the factors in our decision to turn down this subscription
opportunity was that we determined we had spent over $250,000 in the last
seven years for print and CD-ROM access to this information, and that if
we licensed the Web of Science, we would have to spend an additional 6
figure dollar amount to gain access to this same information once again,
albeit reformated for the web. 

We did like the product, but we had some philosophical objections to
spending taxpayer dollars to purchase the same information from the same
company, three times in the past several years.  In light of tight budgets
and taxpayer suspicion of higher education priorites -- there were several
unflattering headlines that we could imagine appearing in the state
newspapers that we simply didn't want to take a chance on reading. 

We are not against paying reasonble fees associated with reformatting data
for web access and have done so on occassion - but substantial charges to
access backfile information have not been an issue with 95% of the other
vendors marketing web data that we deal with. 

I am wondering how other libraries evaluate these types of purchases.  If
there are substantial backfile charges involved for web access to
information that you have been paying for for years, how does this factor
into your decision making? 

--Dennis Dillon 
Head, Collections and Information Resources 
The University of Texas at Austin


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