I'm slightly suprised that librarians find anything odd in
this.
It's not really that we find secret pricing odd; it's that we
find it unacceptable (or I do, anyway -- I shouldn't presume to
speak for everyone else).
In the print world, the price was the price. In the digital
world, as Peggy says herself, 'we don't all pay the price';
actual prices paid by individual consortia and even individual
libraries tend to be the result of often protracted
negotiation. Different factors may have a bearing in each case.
So making public the price actually negotiated would be most
unfair on the vendor, wouldn't it?
I can see why publishers find transparent pricing undesirable,
but I really don't see how they can claim that it's unfair. If
you're going to sell a product or service to the public, then it
seems to me that the public has a right to know how much it's
paying. (If you're selling to a private institution, then you
may be able to negotiate terms of secrecy into the deal -- but it
doesn't seem to me that the institution is under any moral
obligation to agree. "Fairness" certainly doesn't enter into it.
I see no logical connection between the fact that prices and
license terms vary from institution to institution as a matter of
negotiation and the proposition that they should be kept secret
as a matter of fairness.)
----
Rick Anderson
Dir. of Resource Acquisition
University of Nevada, Reno Libraries
rickand@unr.edu