---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 20 Oct 2000 08:12:54 -0500
From: Peter Picerno <ppicerno@choctaw.astate.edu>
Subject: Re: Cost per title of print journals versus journals in
      electronic da tabases... (Buddy Pennington)

Good point, Buddy, but there are a few things you need to consider, such as
the more 'rarefied' titles (for lack of a better word - perhaps
'specialized' would be better) which are part of every subject area ...
where there is any sort of research going on in an institution there will be
demand for titles which are not usually part of the bundled packages which
aggregators offer, and to acquire such titles in a more cost-effective
fashion sometimes means rather pricy solutions (we've just gone with Ovid
for some medical journals). What you state may be true for general
collections of core-type journals, but I would imagine that if most of us
were to do a title-by-title comparison between our single-subscription
titles and those in the bundles, we would not find a great amount of overlap
(all other problems like archiving, etc. aside). Nonetheless, it would be an
interesting comparison to make.

Peter Picerno

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2000 16:18:51 -0500
From: "Pennington, Buddy" <buddy.pennington@ROCKHURST.EDU>
Subject: Cost per title of print journals versus journals in electronic da
                tabases...

Hi all,

I recently answered a survey for a grad student and got to thinking about
figuring average costs per journal title for print journals and for
electronic journals offered through online databases.  For example:  our
library is spending $115,000 this year for print and microfiche
subscriptions to 715 journals.  This comes to an average price of $160 per
title.  We are also spending $3250 to subscribe to Academic Universe, a
full-text database that has 4546 full-text journals.  This comes to an
average price of 72 cents per title.  I know this is a quick and dirty
estimation that does not take into account a lot of things (like we get the
print and microfiche forever but not the electronic, the online version
offers around 10 years of holdings per title while the cost for print and
microfiche is for only 1 year, access to the electronic content is far wider
and easier than access to the print content, etc.), but it seems to me that
full-text databases are a much better and cost-efficient way to provide
journal access to users than print subscriptions.  Not too mention that
consortia can get good prices for databases, but individual libraries cannot
for print subscriptions.

Anyway,  I would be very interested to hear about any cost studies or
journal articles that have examined these issues or any thoughts and/or
opinions from you.

Buddy Pennington
Acquisitions/Serials Librarian
Rockhurst University Greenlease Library
buddy.pennington@rockhurst.edu
#816-501-4143