Interesting presentation (in PowerPoint) from a pre-conference to LIBER's 2004 Annual General Confernce held in St Petersburg recently. The author surveys the impact of the practice of bundling by major journal publishers - this practice involves selling electronic access to a large number of journals for a single price, but typically requires a multi-year deal and restrictions against cancelling individual journals. The weaknesses of this approach are a lack of choice for the library, as smaller publishers are squeezed out by the majors as they consume more and more of the library budget. The author proposes a system of 'fair deals' as an alternative, which would allow libraries to purchase journal collections from a mixed bag of publishers. Better, sure, but it's not open access. Other presentations from the same pre-conference are also available. Via Peter Scott's Library Blog.
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