Re: book prices

On 1 Sep 1998, Bernard Katz <bkatz[_at_]uoguelph.ca> wrote:
>
> Mr. Henderson again puts forward the 'industry view', if I may so state,
> about the effect of "massive" photocopying on journal prices - this time
> on the part of the U.S. National Library of Medicine. To any librarian
> with knowledge of the costs of interlibrary loans, it clearly is more cost
> efficient to subscribe to a journal from which your library continually
> seeks photocopied articles than to proceed with the ILL requests.

This is an interesting theory but does not take into account the widespread squeeze of libraries' spending power by their hosts. The ARL statistics, covering just over 100 of the largest North American collections, indicate 20 members had less money in 1997 than in 1996. Many others had only a few dollars added. The 1996 to 1997 looks much the same. Thus many librarians and faculty report that the last subscriptions to "essential" journals are canceled. The ARL projected that all purchases will be impossible within 25 years if present trends are not turned around.

Even on a constant dollar basis, academic research doubled in the last 15 years in the U.S. It seems that managers of the university "industry" are quite willing to encourage sponsored research with its 56% overhead bonus that pretends to address library costs while viewing its major ingredient -- knowledge -- as a cost to be contained.

IMHO, the sponsors of research are not getting their money's worth as I have discussed at length in the current issue of SOCIETY.

Albert Henderson, Editor, PUBLISHING RESEARCH QUARTERLY <70244.1532[_at_]compuserve.com> Received on Thu Sep 03 1998 - 15:42:48 GMT