FTE based pricing doesn’t bother me. If you have more users, there will be more stress on the vendor’s servers, more use of each article, etc, etc. What *does* bother me is increasing the price for “multiple sites.” If we have 12,000 users spread across 4 sites, why should we pay significantly more than a “single geographic location” campus with 12,000 users? It makes no sense. In the age of online learning and extended campuses, this just seems ridiculous and overly complicated to me. As long as we are reporting the number of users at each “site” what difference does it make whether they are accessing the articles from the main campus, an extended campus, their house, a coffee shop, or a even a mobile device?

~Kelly

Kelly A. Smith
Electronic Resources Collection Librarian

Eastern Kentucky University Libraries

kelly.smith2@eku.edu

From: Rick Anderson [mailto:rick.anderson@UTAH.EDU]
Sent: Wednesday, October 07, 2009 2:55 PM
Subject: Re: Just a thought . . .

> Shoot.  There’s nothing “potentially infinite” about our campus
> population or even the number of “potential users.”  

“Unlimited” would be a better word than “infinite,” I guess.  What’s functionally unlimited is not the number of users, but the amount of use that a given population of users can make of a content service when no download limit is imposed.  When you sell a loaf of bread, what you’re providing in exchange for the purchase price is a single loaf of bread.  When it’s gone, it’s gone, and if the customer wants more he has to buy another loaf.  When you sell site-based access to an online service, you’re providing a functionally unlimited number of downloads.  In that circumstance there’s nothing irrational about pegging the access price, in some degree, to the number of people being served.  (How high or low the price itself should be is a separate question, of course.)

Now granted, it doesn’t cost a publisher twice as much to provide two downloads as it does to provide one download.  But it does cost significantly more to give access to a campus of 25,000 students than it does to give access to a campus of 1,000 students.

Just to be extra clear: I’m not defending any particular publisher’s pricing practice.  Just pointing out that it makes no sense to compare selling a loaf of bread to providing an ongoing service like an e-journal.

--
Rick Anderson
Assoc. Dir. for Scholarly Resources & Collections
Marriott Library
Univ. of Utah
rick.anderson@utah.edu
(801) 721-1687