I guess that depends upon what expectations you have of your subscription
agent.  Swets, or any subscription agent, doesn't set the pricing options:
the publisher does.  When you say "their deadline of October 8th" I'm
assuming you mean a deadline set by Swets.  Your subscription agent sets
deadlines for decisions such as these so that they can process your
renewals in a timely manner and hopefully neither your print nor online
access will be disrupted.  You didn't mention the publisher of these
titles where online was formerly free with print and now you have to pay
(was it one publisher, more than one?).  Maybe Swets wasn't informed by
the publisher of these decisions until very recently, and could only pass
the options on to and request decisions from you when they knew what they
were.

My suggestion is that you have a discussion with your sales and/or
customer service rep at Swets to figure out if they can meet your
expectations.  If you expect them to give you more notice than a week or
two to make renewal decisions such as these, let them know.  If they can't
do that (for example, if the publisher doesn't give them enough notice),
then they should explain why.  You pay them a service charge, they provide
a service.  Tell them what you need, and they'll tell you if they can
provide it.

Good luck!

Kim Maxwell

_______________________________________
Kim Maxwell
Serials Acquisitions Librarian
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
MIT Libraries, Room 14E-210
77 Massachusetts Ave.
Cambridge, MA 02139-4307
phone: 1-617-253-7028
fax:   1-617-253-2464
email: kmaxwell@mit.edu

At 01:28 PM 10/11/2004 -0700, you wrote:
>Are other libraries upset that Swets only gave us a little over a week
>to decide whether we want to pay for online titles that were free from
>the publisher? They gave us three options: print plus paid online,
>online only or print only. We had to scramble to make a very hasty
>decision in order to beat their deadline of October 8th.
>
>
>Aimee Algier
>Head of Serials
>Orradre Library
>Santa Clara University
>aalgier@scu.edu