Dear Serialist wisdom;

For the last few years I've been involved with serials pretty much from
the cataloging end only.  At my previous job I had enough experience
with all the wild things that can happen to journal subscriptions to
last til I retire. Some other poor soul handles all that here.  However,
the library director just showed me some figures that have me wondering.

Our library has Ebsco as a subscription agency.  Several months ago we
paid an invoice that was a 10% increase over 2002 and was supposed to
take care of 2003 price increases.  This week we received a
supplementary invoice that increased the total price of our journals by
about 1/3.  The library director did a spot check of various journal
publisher web sites and found the institutional prices listed there were
sometimes as much as half of what Ebsco was charging.  I realize we're
paying a fee for the subscription agency's services, but this
discrepancy seems awfully large.

Has anyone else had this experience with Ebsco or other vendors?

__________

Susan E. Harman
Associate Director for Technical Services
Maryland Historical Society Library
201 W. Monument St.
Baltimore, Md. 21201
410-685-3750 ext. 362
fax 410-385-0487
sharman@mdhs.org