RE: National Online: Nature and Others... (like SCIENCE)

[David Goodman <dgoodman@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>]

Rick, we have 6000 fte and 30,000 journals. At $0.50 per fte, if they all
charged at that rate, our cost for journals would be $90 Million.  (For
perspective, our current total acquisition budget is about $10 Million.)

You would probably say only the good journals should charge at this rate.
I wonder how many of the 30,000 would say they aren't good and should
therefore charge less?  I will not argue for the current model of pricing,
by which the poorer journals cost more because of their lower circulation
and high first-copy costs, but this one is no more rational.

David Goodman, 
Princeton University Biology Library 
dgoodman@princeton.edu
609-258-3235

On Sat, 19 May 2001, Rick Anderson wrote:

> > You are basing that calculation on the assumption that all of those users
> > represented by the library will actually use the resource.
> 
> No, I'm basing it on the assumption that all of those users have the
> _opportunity_ to use it.  Granted, not all of them will take advantage.  
> But at UNR, we break even at 46 users -- every user beyond that number is
> getting access for less than $77 of the library's money, and many of those
> users will be faculty members (who would have had to pay $127 for an
> individual subscription).  There's simply no way to reasonably construe
> institutional access to Science Online as anything less than a bargain for
> most institutions.  (Nor, I maintain, is there any reasonable way to
> construe the existence of a higher-priced premium service as
> "discrimination.")
> 
> -------------
> Rick Anderson
> Electronic Resources/Serials Coordinator
> The University Libraries
> University of Nevada, Reno
> 1664 No. Virginia St.
> Reno, NV  89557
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> rickand@unr.edu