I have been following the flurry of messages regarding Faxon with great
interest.

One point which I feel needs to be challenged is the opinion that the loss
of Faxon would mean a virtual monopoly in this country.

This point of view would lead one to believe that Faxon and Ebsco are the
only vendors marketing periodical services to the U.S. market.

This is far from true.  Off the top of my head:

Readmore Academic (Parent Company-British) is actively marketing to the U.S.
Academic Library Community.

Dawson (also British owned) purchased McGregor (sp?) a few years back and is
also actively marketing to the U.S. Library community.

Swets (Dutch owned) is offering a consolidated service, and I personally
know of at least one U.S. library that has entrusted their entire title list
to Swets.

Turner moves from Faxon to Ebsco, but wasn't independent for many years
anyway, so we can hardly count that.

There are also a number of small targeted companies (either by subject
matter, region of the country, or market niche) that remain viable.

I am also told that at least one other European company is quitly taking on
consolidated lists for U.S. libraries.

All of these companies are competing agressively on the basis of price, and
(on the surface at least) offer roughly comparable suite of services.

So, yes the loss of Faxon would mean a major _independent_ player was gone,
but we are still a long way from a monopoly.

Jim Mouw
University of Chicago