Re: New strategy at NY Times and libraries

["B.G. Sloan" <bgsloan2@yahoo.com>]

I believe we will be seeing more publishers experimenting with 
doing away with subscription fees in favor of advertising 
revenues. Times Select met the NYT expectations, and was bringing 
in $10 million annually in subscription fees. The NYT thinks the 
upside from ad revenues will be greater. Granted, the NYT is not 
a scholarly journal, but I think this move will have a lot of 
people in the publishing industry sitting up and taking notice.

I may have mentioned this before, but if this sort of trend 
continues will it gradualy begin to marginalize the library, bit 
by bit? In other words, if more information becomes available 
freely will that lead people to think they need the library less?

Bernie Sloan

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Ann Okerson <ann.okerson@yale.edu> wrote:

Readers,

I forwarded a little while ago a piece of today's longer article
in the New York Times about their decision to stop charging for
archives and some current materials. I believe libraries have
paid a significant sum of money for the back issues that will now
be available for free (e.g., before 1923). Should we now be
dropping out of those arrangements?

This article may also be of interest in our thread about business
models to sustain publishing, even though the item at issue here
is a newspaper rather than a specifically scholarly journal or
database.

Ann Okerson/Yale