LWW Electronic Journals
Love 'em or hate 'em, the issues with electronic journals are enough to drive a person to drink heavily and unfortunately I am left smelling the wine cork until I have my second child (hopefully soon). My latest battle has been with my LWW titles. I scrimped and pinched my budget this year so that I could participate in a LWW consortia that allowed me full text access to approximately 150 online titles. Come budget time (in September) the usage statistics justified to my boss my continued participation in the consortia. Yippie!
Ah, I was too quick to celebrate. I should have known better. In November I was told by my Ovid rep that the original LWW consortia I belonged to was being cancelled by LWW and would not be available for the 2007 year. Oh snap.
Could this have come at worse time? Just a month before the end of the year after every library has already set their 2007 budget and I am told that what I budgeted for is now gone!? Oh but if I want I can go with the LWW's Total Access Collection for the very reasonable price of an arm and leg, which of course is not in my 2007 budget and most likely won't be ever. So, I am forced to piece together an LWW online collection based off of my heavily used titles.
First it was the AHA online journals debacle now LWW is yanking journal packages out from under my feet. I am starting to develop a nervous tick every time I hear the name Lippincott. I am wondering how many other hospital or academic medical libraries have had this similar problem. How is any of this good business practice?
2 Comments:
I got this from the Ovid folks--the original LWW deal was, get this, "underpriced," and those libraries that got the underpriced deal will now have to pay more. Those who were "right priced" will not feel any effects. Now we can all feel "Price is Righted."
In Oklahoma we have had a partial LWW package for several years. Every year they tell us it's going away and we'll have to switch to Total LWW. But again this year, they renewed the partial package for 2007. My guess is that our Ovid sales rep fought for us to be able to keep it. Maybe it's too late now, but you might consider going back to your rep and saying, "Oklahoma still has it so can you make it work for us too, at least one more year?"
P.S. This is my first time to participate in a blog. I learned so much at the MLA webcast in November. Thanks, Krafty Librarian, for being a part of that.
Post a Comment
<< Home