Pricing Models for Electronic Information
While Brooklyn spends a significant portion of its own budget to acquire full-text electronic information, like other CUNY schools we also rely on the University's support for some number of these popular yet costly materials. Within the limits of the central office's budget for such products, the librarians who make up the Electronic Resources Advisory Committee (ERAC) evaluate and recommend the purchase of various e-resources. Brooklyn is well represented on this group by Professors Beth Evans (our representative) and Susan Vaughn (who chairs ERAC).
Within CUNY, pricing models for electronic resources vary:
In some cases, the University pays the entire cost for a resource.
In others, it and the individual campuses cost-share products.
Sometimes the central office negotiates a good price for a product, then individual colleges participate as local interests and resources indicate.
Whatever the model, the benefit Brooklyn realizes from CUNY-central's negotiating power and that obtained through our other consortial relationships is substantial. (Susan Vaughn participates in the semi-monthly meetings of the State's Consortia of Library Consortiums, a group which explores new approaches to acquiring electronic resources and licensing issues.) This year, we spent $123,000 on electronic services. About $6,750 was supported by gifts (MathSciNet and ACM digital library from the Maria Fund; the Alternative Press Index from the Eubanks Fund). The value of the products funded by the central office was approximately $71,700.
CUNY is not the only consortium through which we cooperatively purchase e-resources, obtaining lower prices through volume buying. In 2001 membership in NYLink (a state-wide group) enabled us to obtain better pricing for a number of products.
