>A personal soap-box: these types of individual title subscriptions, from
>any publisher, should not be described as 'free with print' though, as it is
>a combined subscription (especially if not optional) then it is "included in
>the price" NOT 'free'.
I totally agree. But that's the thing isn't it, they probably worked out
the linguistics of it ages ago. If it's down as free then it can be taken
away at any point and with no legal problems. If it had been included in
the price then it would be down to the terms and conditions of the
contracts signed at the time and I'm guessing there would be no mention of
access to online archives in those contracts. Saying it's free gives them a
massive get out clause. The fact that you didn't have a choice doesn't
really come into it. They can certainly argue they didn't have to give you
online access but they did it out of the kindness of their hearts, to
foster a 'system of academic intercourse' or something. It's the whole,
'you're lucky we gave it to you free for so long' attitude that I'm sure
we're going to see more of from many publishers.
Of course there are costs involved in maintaining access to archives (and
the added costs of archiving even further back) but I very much doubt the
running costs come to the level of increases I see mentioned here.
Especially if you got the same service for no added costs the year before.
What happened? Did their computer system burn down and they needed to start
again from scratch?
They are bleeding some of us dry with their shenanigans and it's just a
matter of at what stage each of us gets to a financial limit that causes
cancelations and a degradation of our library services. And unfortunately
I'm guessing that is well before the number of cancellations would start
hitting them where it hurts.
Kevin
Kevin Symonds
Librarian
MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit
15 Chaucer Road
Cambridge
CB2 2EF
Tel: 01223 355294 ext 110
Fax: 01223 359062
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