We still find EBSCO's services to be helpful, particularly if you are using their A to Z service.  They do a lot of monitoring of the online world and I have often found out first from them that something was moving from print to online at a price I could afford.


Judith A. Koveleskie, MLIS, MA
Periodicals Librarian
Seton Hill University
Reeves Memorial Library
1 Seton Hill Drive
Greensburg, PA 15601-1548
kovelesk@setonhill.edu
724-838-7828
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On Mon, Feb 11, 2013 at 1:13 PM, Sally Smith <ssmith@bethel.edu> wrote:
Hello Beth,
We also use EBSCO and have similar experiences.  Since we are moving to more and more online we don't need EBSCO's help claiming print as much as we did in the past.  As a result I have moved to more direct orders, in part to eliminate the service charge which I don't incur when ordering directing from the publisher. 


Sally


Sally Smith                
Bethel University Library/Serials Dept.    
3900 Bethel Drive  St. Paul, MN 55112
Phone:  651-635-8544   Fax:  651-635-1979
http://library.bethel.edu


On Mon, Feb 11, 2013 at 11:52 AM, Beth Vernaci <BVernaci@afscme.org> wrote:

Hello list!

I know this is a question that has come up over and over in the history of serials management (and yes, I am searching the list archives!), but I still thought I would ask the collective wisdom of the list. We currently use EBSCO to order most of our serials. However, over the years we have noticed that EBSCO no longer offers monetary benefits it used to (since we apparently don’t count staff time as a benefit). Day after day we are offered deals directly from publishers (renew now for 25% off cover price!) that EBSCO either can’t or won’t match. I thought that one of the benefits of purchasing through an agent was that they could negotiate lower prices due to bulk ordering, but it doesn’t seem like this is the case with EBSCO.  Furthermore EBSCO seems to be offering less and less print + online packages. I don’t know if this is because the publishers are being greedy or what, but titles we used to get both print + online for $200 we can now get a print copy for $200 and a separate online subscription for $150… We are a relatively small library (around 300 serials). So my questions to the list are: Has anyone gone from a vendor back to ordering direct? Has anyone read a good study on a cost benefit analysis of publishers discount offers vs. purchasing through a vendor? Even though we are relatively small I would rather not go title by title to figure out if leaving our vendor would be worth it.

Please reply off list.

Thanks!

Beth Vernaci

Library Assistant

AFSCME Information Center

bvernaci@afscme.org

202-429-1057

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