[Also posted at ERIL-L.]

All,

When we subscribed to ProQuest Historical Newspapers: New York Times many long years ago, we opted to pay extra to purchase ownership of the backfile (which, I think, now goes up through about 1930, but it’s a rolling backfile). This ownership gives us the right to have a local copy of all of the article metadata, images, PDFs, what-have-you.

We haven’t had an opportunity or interest until now to exercise that right. But when we asked ProQuest to deliver that to us, we were told that we had to pay a “pass-thru” charge with two delivery options: cloud, or disk drive. Of the two options, the cloud option is cheaper and the disk drive option is five times more expensive.

We paid a lot of extra money at the outset for ownership and the right to host this information locally upon request, so it is disappointing to find out that we have to pay even more to actually get it. I’ve been told by our ProQuest rep that this is non-negotiable.

Has anyone else experienced this? Did you just pony up the extra money for it? What are your thoughts about this practice?

Thanks,

Steve