One more thought (RE: Consortia and consolidation (RE: Information Access Alliance ...)

["Rick Anderson" <rickand@unr.edu>]

> As a friend noted to me, a principal driver for these mergers 
> is the need to get more influence with library consortia, whose 
> fundamental structure favors the largest publishers.

My earlier comments about the general impact of consolidated 
spending notwithstanding, I do wonder whether your friend is 
correct about his assessment in this case.  While a general trend 
towards consolidated spending will tend, I believe, towards a 
general trend in consolidated selling (especially among jobbers 
and middlemen, where margins are especially tight), I have to 
wonder whether library behavior _in particular_ was really a 
"principal driver" in the Blackwell/Wiley merger, or in any of 
the other major publisher mergers we've seen recently.  Cause and 
effect can be hard to tease out, of course, but I suspect there 
may have been much more important factors at play here.

----
Rick Anderson
Dir. of Resource Acquisition
University of Nevada, Reno Libraries
rickand@unr.edu