The so-called `serials crisis' of spiraling journal prices is provoked further by additional demands on library expenditure for `new' electronic resources. Library consortia are but one solution as these links demonstrate.

 * California Digital Library (CDL) have developed a method of calculating the relative ‘value’ of a journal subscription and this is discussed in their February newsletter. “The strategy involves using objective metrics to calculate the value of scholarly journals and identify titles that make a greater or lesser contribution to the University’s mission of teaching, research, and public service…… use of a Weighted Value Algorithm by Subject Category to assess multiple vectors of value for each journal title under review.” Certainly worth keeping an eye on to see what emerges.

 SWETS announced the launch of SwetsWise5.7 which includes a License Bank of some 45 publishers license conditions for customers to help understand what is covered by existing publisher licenses and an eBook catalog.

  Further work conducted at LISU on behalf of Oxford University press compares and articulates trends in journal pricing from 2000 to 2006 for biomedical and social science journals. The executive summary is available here and a full report on the findings was published in the July 2008 issue of Learned Publishing (subscription required).

 The ten University of California libraries with a total budget of some $64 million and total digital resources expenditure of $27 million annually are a major customer to be taken seriously by publishers. A recent report from the UC libraries by the collection development librarians as a group, develops a value based pricing model using a number of key metrics; this is important insight for librarians and publishers.

 A colloquium at Stanford University on the “Ongoing crisis in academic-journal pricing” in November 2006 was perhaps predictable in painting a gloomy picture of and for the large commercial and not-for-profit publishers. The web pages that Stanford devotes to the issue include a number of tables such as “Journals that cost $1,000+”. Perhaps most relevant are the tables that show actual cancellations over the past two years and articulate the guiding principles behind journal evaluations. Although the librarians may bluster about price if a sufficient number of the Faculty want the title – then it will be purchased as is clear from the top item on the list of Stanford Library “Strategies for future cancellations”:

• Consult with faculty to identify the highest priorities for collections.
• Eliminate virtually all remaining duplicate print subscriptions.
• Migrate subscriptions from print or print plus online to online only whenever possible.
• Perform cost-benefit analysis for titles, cancel higher cost per use titles and acquire articles on-demand as needed.
• Reduce expenditures on books and other non-serials.
• Cancel unique titles.
• Continue to pursue cooperative agreements that benefit campus.
• Monitor and influence the future of scholarly publishing.

 Whose business is it? An article by Scott Plutchak a member of the New England Journal of Medicine library advisory board about librarian and publisher relationships and the potential for misunderstanding.

 The non-subscription side of periodicals is a useful recent report published by the Council on Library and Information Resources on changing library operations and costs in the transition to fully online collection policies.

 The Cost to Preserve Authentic Electronic Records in Perpetuity: Comparing Costs across Cost Models and Cost Frameworks this article presents some rigorous analysis of the issues cut across government, nonprofit, commercial, and academic sectors.

 See the Association of Research Libraries’ Academic Health Science Library Statistics for  detailed expenditures by 63 major health science libraries in the US.

 This site lists some 160 library consortia globally and provides a good overview of library/publisher issues. Note in particular this document on purchasing and pricing models for libraries posted in December 2001.

 For a standard license agreement which is endorsed by CLIR (Council on Library and information Resources) and DLF(Digital Library Foundation). The agreement section is part of a larger part of the Yale library site which is a useful reference source on licensing digital information.

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