So to the entire library world this post is old news. But with the craziness of my life recently I only had a chance to read the April 15, 2010 Library Journal this week. And again there was another article which mentioned the "new normal" and also the sky high price of periodicals. It is amazing to me that periodicals go up in price usually between 5-10% per year, because usually most library's budgets for periodicals do not go up nearly that much. Additionally in the past few years and many of next years budgets have already been reduced so that there will be even less of a collections budget for periodicals.
Again, like I said this is all old news in the library world: increasing periodical prices and stagnate budgets. But one tidbit from the article called "Seeking the New Normal" By Kittie S. Henderson and Stephen Bosch really shocked me: "In October, the library world reeled as Nature Publishing Group (NPG) announced a 640 percent price increase (from $39.95 in 2009 to $299 in 2010) for a print subscription to Scientific American." WOW! How could a publisher do that?!? A 640% increase?? True, that price for a science journal started out at lower than average, but to me that just seems ludicrous!
I know that individuals rant and rave about these price jumps in things like blogs, but does the library world actually stand up and try to fight them? Can libraries band together and say we will not purchase a journal? Could they say that to a journal as standard and prestigious as Scientific American or would NPG just laugh, because they know that libraries will keep buying the journal anyway because our patrons still want it and they don't exactly know the cost that is going into purchasing it?
