On Sun, Dec 21, 2008 at 8:41 PM, David Goodman <dgoodmanny(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I comment as a professional academic librarian. I was
the cochair of
princeton's collection development committee on electronic resources
from the day it started.
The typical budget today for e-resources for a major university is on
the order of three to six million dollars a year, mainly for science
journals and databases. The most expensive subscriptions to the works
of a single publisher can be over one million dollars, and there are
individual databases in the fifty to one hundred-thousand dollar
range. A typical budget for a good undergraduate college might be one
million; it will not have the most expensive journals.
On Sun, Dec 21, 2008 at 12:11 AM, George Herbert
<george.herbert(a)gmail.com> wrote:
We need to get someone who's more of a
professional librarian to look at
this and comment. What are typical university library online reference
access budgets like, for example?
Phoebe?
Thank you, David.
Are those prices proprietary or sensitive, or would it be possible for you
to release a list of what your libraries subscribe to, for discussion and
analysis purposes?
I think the "can we afford $6 million a year" answer is a clear but not
absolute no (with a compelling argument, it's in the range of charitable
donations we could conceivably ask for).
But would for example $100,000, or $500,000, make a significantly useful
amount to work with?
What could we get for that, and what would be missing?
--
-george william herbert
george.herbert(a)gmail.com