One of the things that I’ve been wondering (e.g. in re my last post on serials subscription economics) is how this rent v. own dichotomy for books is going to play out. Because the fact that e-resources subscriptions are like renting, not like owning, is very salient to librarians, and was not obvious to some [...]
Entries Tagged as 'serials'
rent v. own: cultural paradigm
February 2nd, 2010 · 11 Comments · Uncategorized
Tags:ebooks·economics·john murphy·john scalzi·paradigms·serials
serials subscription economics: or, monopolies, italics, and cannibalism
January 26th, 2010 · 10 Comments · Uncategorized
So the husband and I were talking yesterday about the new EBSCO monopoly on certain periodicals, after I read Dorothea Salo’s post on the matter (now BoingBoinged). And he was wondering, so really, what’s the issue here? What’s the appeal of these database vendors? And a BoingBoing commenter wonders, “the content providers have decided to [...]
Tags:budgets·dorothea salo·ebsco·economics·electronic resources·monopolies·serials·serials crisis·vendors
Thing-ology on the library ebook market
October 8th, 2009 · 4 Comments · Uncategorized
Thing-ology has an interesting post on the economics of ebooks in libraries. They argue, essentially, that libraries need site-licensed copies of ebooks rather than ones tied to specific physical devices; this will split the library and direct-to-consumer ebook markets and allow for runaway rental/licensing costs for library ebooks. There’s an apt comparison to runaway journal [...]
Tags:budgets·copyright·digitization·ebooks·economics·serials
why is serials recordkeeping so problematic?
July 12th, 2009 · 8 Comments · Uncategorized
I’ve been reading this post, from the charmingly named In the Library with the Lead Pipe. The part I’ve been munching through: apparently it’s really, really hard for libraries to keep track of their electronic serials and database usage. If you want to know which of the things you’re subscribed to are actually getting used [...]
Tags:culture clash·databases·digitization·evaluation·ILS·recordkeeping·serials·user needs
