[Publib] database vendors monster mash

[Linda Ballard]

Amen.  There has to be a better, and fairer, way to price online
databases.  Pricing for databases is all over the map.  Our Consortium
of nine smallish libraries has attempted, with very limited success, to
broker deals with vendors based on some reality of what they should cost
for a group our size with modest usage.  For example, our experiences
with a product, which I will not name here but is widely used for
Reference in the USA, was that there was no rationale for what price was
quoted to one member library when compared to another.  It seemed to
depend more on the phase of the moon, or whether or not the
salesperson's mood-elevating drugs had kicked in.  Backing away from the
product seemed to sometimes trigger sudden "special offers" that were
markedly different from what was quoted a day earlier or to another
library.  There has also been a recent effort to deal with vendors on a
statewide basis and we discovered when polling libraries about what they
paid for some popular databases that there were very wide variations.
Some large systems got much better deals because they had had the
product for years and somehow a lower price was grandfathered in, or the
price was difficult to determine since it was bundled in with other
products they could afford but a smaller library couldn't.  I'm for
anything that would clarify this murky subject.

 

Linda V. Ballard

Director, University City Public Library

6701 Delmar Blvd.

University City MO 63130

314.727.3150; fax, 314.727.6005

 

 

 

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