Hi, Mark,

Our library’s collection also suffers from a lack of adequate funding.  At the end of 2009, we ended up cancelling subscriptions to over 500 titles just to keep up with publisher inflation.  The fact that some were able to over us reduced or flat pricing in 2010 helped tremendously, but the only way we could afford to keep our high impact titles—many of which are our most expensive—was to cut costs, as your library has done.  Now this year we’ve seen tremendous increases from some publishers, anywhere from 24-76% (not counting the incredible (over 500%) increases from the American Thoracic Society, which so many librarians have already posted about).   

I wish there was  a better solution to handling rising journals prices, but at this point, I can’t see one on the horizon.

Joanne Romano, MLS

Licensing and Serials Librarian

Houston Academy of Medicine-Texas Medical Center Library

1133 John Freeman Blvd.

Houston, TX  77030

From: SERIALST: Serials in Libraries Discussion Forum [mailto:SERIALST@list.uvm.edu] On Behalf Of Mark Ferguson
Sent: Friday, January 21, 2011 1:08 PM
To: SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU
Subject: [SERIALST] Rising prices of American Chemical Society journals

Has anybody else been struggling trying to figure out what to do about their American Chemical Society journal subscriptions?  We had been subscribed to nine titles costing us around $18,000 p/yr, already some of our costliest titles.  Also the titles are underutilized; we maintain our subscriptions to them  at the Chemestry department's request to fulfill requirements for accredation (and American Chemical Society is the accrediting body, do I sense a conflict of interest here?).

Generally it seems that most of the subscription charges for our periodicals have risen only modestly, if at all,  for 2011, due in part to low inflation and deminished library funding for subscriptions, as library budgets are shrinking.  This however is not the case with our Amdrican Chemical Society subscriptions. The subscription charges for these same 9 titles have gone up from $18,000 to $23,000 per year for 2011.  The only thing my Rep can offer is a deal to provide more ACS journal subscriptions at a slightly higher rate, which of course does not address the problem that we cannot afford the subscriptions we currently have with ACS, let alone any additional costs.

We have canceled our subscriptions to about a third of the titles we subscribed to in the previous year to keep costs under control.  Has anyone faced these same issues?  What else have people done to resolve this problem?  I would be very interested to hear what other kinds of stategies serials department directors have come up with in the face of these rising costs.

Mark Ferguson

Periodicals Librarian, College of Saint Elizabeth