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October 25, 2003
Digital Disconnect?
Are virtual resources starting to successfully replace print? Are attorneys making strides in switching to virtual research? You may know the answer to that question for your own institution/firm, but perhaps you've wondered what the overall trend is in this area. If so, you may want to read an article recently published in the Law Library Journal, Feasibility and Viability of the Digital Library in a Private Law Firm
While some of the results were fairly predictable, there are some surprises.
What struck me is that there seems to be a disconnect in terms of attitudes about pricing between vendors and purchasers. (Go figure.) When asked about pricing, most legal publishers responded that print was the most expensive to the customer. Yet the librarians express concern about the high cost of digital materials in comparison to print.
What the vendor seems to forget when discussing pricing of print v. electronic is that typically our print collection is used by a number of different people, at different times, mind you. But we don't restrict a book to one user.
Since most vendors seem to want to avoid concurrent pricing like the plague, and seem very attached to per seat pricing, that's exactly what they do with their electronic offerings. Then, I'm guessing, they compare their one user price with the one copy of the book/journal/newsletter print cost. From their point of view, this results in an inexpensive option, but to the librarians, faced with buying a license for every user, electronic resources are really quite pricey.
But that's just a guess!
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