I am glad to be able to say, that the German ASM Consortium that
we established last year (about 40 members) paid off for all of us,
including ASM. Through a concerted effort of all parties involved, we
managed the transition from a bunch of individual, in some cases
multiple subscriptions scattered over various agencies and direct
orders, to a consortium of e-only package subscriptions (institutions
can choose among basic, clinical or complete package) with a
decent discount very smoothely. Payment and dealing with special
cases was organized behind the scenes by EBSCO, whose team
dealed with this very efficiently and did a really great job. There was
only one institution that accidently was cut off from access on Mar
17, and through a quick intervention, the case could be resolved
very quickly and access was reestablished within a day. If you speak
for a consortium, you are in a much better position to make sure that
things run smooth than if you represent a single library - that should
not be the case in principle, but in real life, it does make a difference.
For all the saved recurring trouble with renewals (we had the same
complaints as elsewhere in Germany), this consortium was alone
worth the effort we put into it last year, when we had to organize it
from the scratch in a very short time period.
I can only encourage you to set up consortia elsewhere also, the
more participants, the better. We worked together with Steve Smith
from PCGplus, who is the European representative for ASM.
Best regards,
Bernd-Christoph Kaemper, Stuttgart University Library
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