If only I had an “empty shelves” photo to submit. But alas, in this regard my law firm library is way ahead of the curve, as we shed hundreds of books several years ago, and I did not take pictures of those empty shelves.
I agree with the suggestion in the Shed West Era Photo Wins AALL’s Day in the Life Contest (and a call for more empty stacks photos) Law Librarian Blog post that the trend to “eliminate out-of-plan licensing without adding lightly used out-of-plan resources to in-plan only licenses to escalate” is likely to occur.
My library continues to make plans to downsize our rather small print collection with the hope of bringing those titles into our Lexis or Westlaw in-plan contract and saving money or at least not costing us more only to find that the cost to do so seems to significantly exceed what we’ve been paying for print! Thus no cost savings there!
Maybe I should do as our IT Director suggested and just cancel the print without adding it to an in-plan contract and see if they even miss it!! Aside from the currency factor why does online cost more than print? After all, the publisher does not have costly print production issues.
Is anyone else dealing with these same issues? What solutions have worked? What has not? Can we actually get away with canceling the print and add them to our in-plan contracts? How long until the other big vendors shed the in-plan versus out-of-plan pricing models as Bloomberg Law has done? And do so at a reasonable per attorney, per month cost?
Cheryl Niemeier, Guest Blogger
[NOTE: if you do have a picture of empty shelves, please email a copy to Greg]