Re: New strategy at NY Times and libraries

[Sandy Thatcher <sgt3@psu.edu>]

Don't count on advertising as providing any significant revenue 
stream for journals in the humanities and social sciences. In 
fact, since the introduction of electronic journals, advertising 
revenue has dropped substantially for journals in these fields 
because, for instance, the electronic versions in Project Muse do 
not carry the advertising pages and hence fewer eyeballs see 
them. Our rule of thumb now, as an advertiser, is to place ads 
only in membership-based journals because those, at least, are 
mailed in print form to every member of the association.

Sandy Thatcher
Penn State University Press

> 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