Pricing and Acquisitions Policies for Electronic Resources: Is the Market Stable Enough to Establish Local Standards?

For acquiring these established, traditional library resource formats, librarians have been able to establish polices that guide how much they pay and to whom they make payment. They have also set parameters for approval plans, limiting the receipt of monographs priced over a certain amount. They systematically review serials titles to determine the relative value of a title as compared to its subscription cost. The question is whether these approaches will ever be possible for electronic resources. Accordingly, this article discusses some early pricing models the electronic resources vendor community adopted before the acceptance of the World Wide Web as the primary delivery mechanism. Then it examines current pricing structures for both electronic indexing and aggregator products and for electronic journals. Finally, the author asked librarians familiar with electronic resource issues to discuss pricing structures they find suitable for their institutions and for varying types of resources, indicating perhaps that individual institutions might be able to establish local acquisitions policies governing electronic resources budgeting.