The questions which Ann raises in terms of the society specialty
journals survey are interesting ones.   First, I hope that she passes on
to the society our sincere thanks that they have chosen this way of
gaining input from their potential customers.  Certainly, full-text on
cd-rom is an interesting option for purchase.  Should we assume that
this would be a purchase, an ownership, of the disks, rather than a
"lease"?  Can we also assume that replacement of stolen or damaged disks
would be low-cost (or maybe even free?)  The only problems with
scientific journals in computerized format is that of graphics.  How
would they translate from CD to paper?  Mose of us have ink jet
printers, not laser printers, on our cd-rom equipment (cost of laser
printers is prohibitive unless you charge for pages copied).  I doubt
that ink jets would do this society's journals any justice.  And, how
would faculty respond to having to take downloaded files (I assume that
the cd-rom would come with software allowing you to download pages or
articles to disk in addition to retrieval software) to yet another
facility to get laser prints (which they might also have to pay for)?
In answer to question "a", the decision to purchase specialty journals
in hard copy would depend on how articles in them are cited.  Are
articles going to carry duplicate information for citation purposes?  If
someone cites the page and issue in the specialty journal, how will that
translate into the consolidated version?  The nature of the
subscriptions and their cost IS important.  Is it much cheaper to get
all the specialty journals than to subscribe to the cd-rom?  Or
vice-versa?  Can you subscribe to only SOME of the specialty titles?  In
these days of increasing serials co
sts, more and more libraries are considering the wisdom of continuing
blanket subscriptions to society journals as one of the "givens" of
collection development.  Are the specialty journals so esoteric that you
can afford to live without them?  As to question (c), I'm tempted to ask
"Are you kidding" when asked if I'd purchase individual titles in paper
copy AND also subscribe to a cd-rom!  But, then again, I'm trying to cut
subscriptions in my science and engineering library by about $200,000 this
year.  In the other(d) category, I'd like to say that this sounds like a
catalogers' and ILL librarians' nightmare (plural intentional because this
will cause many people in many institutions many a night's sleep).  Issues
of paging, citations, continues and continued by notes, call numbers, etc.
will need to be resolved.  Thanks, Ann, for asking.  I'm sorry to have
responded with more questions than answers.  Kate Herzog, Director, Science
and Engineering Library, University of New York at Buffalo (unlkh@ubvm.bitnet)