Basically, I heard this same argument last week from our president.  It's
easy to tell other people how to do their job; it's not as easy to set
priorities and come up with the financial resources necessary to maintain a
competitive research environment.  Your adminsitration is shunting their
problem onto your shoulders.  They will equip a new lab if they believe it
is important to support research; well, the collection is a critical
research laboratory that is used by the entire research community, and it
needs continuous feeding to support continuing research.

I would suggest that your administration might take a couple of actions, too:
1.  Forbid publication by your faculty in journals of high priced
publishers - you know the publishers' names!
2.  Refuse to consider publications in these journals in considerations for
raises, promotion or tenure.
3.  Pay page charges and buy reprints of publications in society journals.

Daniel H. Jones (jones@uthscsa.edu)
Assistant Library Director for Collection Development
Briscoe Library
University of Texas Health Science Center
7703 Floyd Curl Drive
San Antonio, Texas, USA  79284-7940
voice:  210-567-2400    fax:  210-567-2490

---------------
Karen Albert wrote:
>My administration recently agreed to increase my serials budget to
>accommodate the 14.5% estimated price increases in 1996 subscriptions.
>However, they made it clear they expect to see librarians, and especially
>me, doing something to lower the prices of journals.  They feel that
>group purchases of specific titles, boycotts, or other organized approaches
>by librarians and their organizations would encourage publishers to
>lower prices.  My question is:
>
>      Do any of you know of library organizations or groups of libraries
>      that have organized in any way to either obtain discounts or to pressure
>      publishers into lowering prices?
>
>I have already approached our local consortium, and they did consult with
>serials vendors in the past about group discounts. The vendors, however,
>indicated that the discounts would be minimal, since their profit margins
>are so low (5-6%).  I'm not sure how boycotts would work, since the massive
>cancellations of the recent past only seem to drive prices upward.  Also,
>I couldn't boycott needed titles without enraging scientists here who
>depend on these journals for their research. Any suggestions about how
>to address my administration's request for action would be much appreciated.
>
>
>Karen Albert
>Director of Library Services
>Talbot Research Library
>Fox Chase Cancer Center
>Phila., PA 19111
>email:  albert@hslc.org     phone: 215-728-2711      fax: 215-728-3655