Hello Henriette and all,

If you remove some of your publisher packages from the subscription agency, you may reduce the amount of your invoice to a point where the service charge on your remaining subscriptions  may increase.  Also, you may lose an agency discount on the journal titles and pay the full price through the publisher. If you take advantage of any early renewal / early payment discounts by your subscription agency(s), this will also be reduced.

We have 2 'consortia package' deals.

One 'consortia package' has the titles spread over 4 of our subscription agents. Initially there was some confusion, but the agents now send us a separate invoice for these titles. The consortia headquarters that deals with the publisher sends us a list of the titles with agents which is easily verified and any titles are added, or removed. If we wished, we could move all of the titles to one agent and redistribute other titles to help even out the accounts and limit the effects of another possible (Faxon) debacle. However our current set up show that we try to treat every agent fairly.

With the other package, it was such a mess at the renewal of the first year, that it was decided to go directly to the publisher for our yearly renewals.  This did have an effect on our service fee from some of the subscription agents. A VERY late acceptance of the terms of this publishers' package and signing of the contract, the conversion from Print to E only on this package combined, payment for print already having occured, with trying get to refund print payments from the publisher's various publishing centers and then billing at E rates, was so convoluted and is still not untangled satisifactorily that, well ...

Look at the contracts to see if it is financially advantageous to the library, and worth a little extra effort on your part.  For me, that is part of "And other duties as assigned" and I have felt the effort is worth it to give the director another example for saying "we are doing all that we can to get the most out of our budget .

With Best Regards,

John Lucas

Serials Librarian
University of Mississippi Medical Center
2500 North State St
Jackson, MS 39216-4505

(PH) (601) 984-1277
(FAX)  ( 601) 984-4569
JLUCAS@ROWLAND.UMSMED.EDU

>>> "Ilyes, Henriette" <heni@RAND.ORG> 6/23/2008 3:16 PM >>>
Hello,

We are in the process of renewing our subscriptions through our
subscription agent, and I was wondering if any of you out there have
ever tried to order or renew your major journal packages directly with
the publishers (e.g. Springer, Sage, Elsevier, etc) rather than through
your subscription agent.

Even though we subscribe through an agency, some publishers require us
to verify the subscriptions we receive through packages directly.  We
are also part of a consortium, so if lists (sometimes long lists) need
to be checked, I spend numerous hours on trying to figure out whose list
is accurate: publisher, consortium, the agent's, or our own records.

I'd like to know the following:

1. If you've done this, have you found it more effective/efficient
dealing directly with publishers?
2. Have you found that publishers respond to claims, customer service
questions, etc. in a timely manner? Have you found that they would
rather deal with the subscription agency?
3. Do you feel overwhelmed when dealing with publisher title lists
directly throughout the year instead of the "big" renewals once or twice
a year?

Are there any other questions or issues you encountered?

Thank you.

Henriette Ilyes
___________________________________
Henriette Ilyes
Library Information Systems Administrator
RAND Library Acquisitions
(310)393-0411 ext. 7909
(310)451-7029 (fax)
Henriette_Ilyes@rand.org

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