In reply to Judy Diffenderfer's question about changing expiration dates
on PW and People:

I don't recall seeing either of the shortened renewal period problems Judy
describes. What I have seen with medical journals is that a publisher decides
to publish an extra VOLUME of journal X and then contacts customers to ask them
whether they want to purchase it at an additional cost (above the long-since
paid for annual subscription payment).  I expect that most librarians purchase
the extra volume to avoid a gap in holdings.  However, since I've seen this
happen only a couple of times in the past few years, maybe I'm wrong!  I
remember at least one instance when we didn't bite, and just accepted the gap.
So maybe other librarians didn't bite either and the ploy didn't pay off.

Last year in spite of modest cancellations, my library experienced over 21%
inflation in renewing our journals.  In these times it's hard enough to plan a
library budget without publishers surprising subscribers with shortened renewal
periods due to frequency changes or special issues, or with added volumes at ad
ditional costs.  I sincerely hope that neither becomes a trend, particularly
when library purses are already so stressed and we're all having to cancel core
journals!

                                --Cindy Hepfer
                                  SUNY at Buffalo Health Sciences Library
                                  hslcindy@ubvm