Original posting on this topic appeared in COLLDV-L on 21 June and is
reproduced below; the response follows it.
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From: Margaret Porter <G.M.Porter.2_at_nd.edu>
At the University of Notre Dame the librarians in Collection Development,
Reference and Electronic Resources, along with teaching and research
faculty, discussed the purchase of the web version of the Oxford English
Dictionary and decided not to subscribe to the web version at this time.
All those participating in the discussion believe that the current pricing
structure for this product is not an equitable one for libraries. The
primary objection is an excessive annual subscription charge for a product
that is not a serial, even if words are added regularly. We believe that an
initial content licensing fee, with a reasonable annual access fee, would
have been a better pricing model. We welcome a discussion on this topic.
G. Margaret Porter
Librarian, Reference Department
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame IN 46556
Phone:219-631-7620
Fax: 219-631-8887
E-Mail: porter.2_at_nd.edu
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(1) From: Dennis Dillon <dillon_at_mail.utexas.edu>
At the University of Texas we agree with Notre Dame's assessment of the Web
version of OED.
However, we will be subscribing because we have been locally serving the
tape version over the web for several years and our users have come to
depend on access to the dictionary, and because of previous verbal
committments we'd made before the national pricing was finalized.
We see two issues here:
1. Is this pricing model economically sustainable over the long-term i.e.
can libraries afford to increasingly move their traditional one-time costs
to a subscription model? Will the price points established in the OED
model affect other publisher's future pricing plans for libraries? When
we've looked ahead to what this does to our budget over the next decade if
even a fraction of other key reference titles follow suit -- well to make a
long story short, it creates some very interesting potential pending
economic ramifications for all of us.
2. The reason many of us leapt aboard the departing OED ship was because it
was a negotiated national deal which we all naturally assumed would
coincide with our own library's best long-term interest. At Texas, we are
beginning to suspect that we may have been guilty of not applying enough
due diligence to some of the large consortia offerings such as this one. We
are now wondering if we shouldn't think more critically about each of these
large-scale deals, and more carefully examine their long-term ramifications
and local effects. In our particular case, we are making a commitment
that over ten years will increase our costs for this information almost
twenty times over.
In defense of this particular offering; a twenty-fold increase in a ten
year price may still be a good value; our situation and misgivings may be
entirely local in nature; we may fundamentally "just not get it," and since
these types of decisions are the essence of collection development -- we
should probably just stop whining and go do something productive instead.
Nevertheless, it will be next to impossible for us to ever cancel a web
subscription to OED once we begin it. Even though we are proceeding with
this subscription, we are doing so with misgivings. In an ideal world we
would have preferred both some product and pricing options.
Notre Dame's proposal of an initial content fee accompanied by an annual
maintenance fee, seems like a reasonable option for those who could not
afford access to the full-blown product with its various added value
features.
--Dennis Dillon
Head, Collections and Information Resources
The University of Texas at Austin
Lynn Sipe lsipe_at_usc.edu
Director, Collection Resources & 213/740-2929
Director, Information Delivery Organization & Retrieval 213/821-1617 (fax)
University Libraries
Information Services Division
c/o IDOR, UVI-A
University of Southern California
Los Angeles, CA 90089-0182
Received on Wed Jun 28 2000 - 09:22:50 EDT