Estimates of the price or value of the individual journals within a full-text database may be useful to librarians engaged in serials reviews or other collection development projects, to scholars investigating the determinants of journal prices, and to publishers seeking to rationalize their pricing strategies. This paper evaluates six methods of…

Over the past decade, the financial crisis has led to reduced government funding for academic libraries in Greece. Now more than ever, it is imperative for library managers to improve their knowledge and understanding of cost behavior, in order to effectively deliver high quality services at decreasing costs. To do so, they need to apply…

"Research Library Issues" ("RLI") focuses on current and emerging topics that are strategically important to research libraries. The articles explore issues, share information, pose critical questions, and provide examples. This issue includes the following articles: (1) Open Educational Resources as Learning Materials:…

Content is both a key ingredient for business and a major expense. Market research shows that the investment in content and data is generally one of the top expense items within a firm. For some firms, within the financial industry, for example, content costs are the second or third level of expense behind the cost of employees. While there has…

This report presents statistics on how Association of Research Libraries (ARL) member libraries spend money on electronic resources. This report indicates that 108 ARL libraries purchased 25,006,758 electronic books. In 2006-2007, there was an ARL median of 243,725 acquisitions of electronic books (this includes one institution that purchased…

The Public Libraries Survey (PLS) is a voluntary survey conducted annually by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). IMLS collects these data under the mandate in the Museum and Library Services Act of 2003 as stated in Section 210. The U.S. Census Bureau is the data collection agent for IMLS. The Fiscal Year (FY) 2008 survey is the…

The 109 Libraries responding to a questionnaire aided the American Library Association's Committee on Photocopying Costs in Libraries to document the patterns or variant factors that affect photocopying rates in U.S. libraries. (MF)

THE COSTS OF TECHNICAL PROCESSING WITHIN A COOPERATIVE LIBRARY CENTER SERVING A NUMBER OF MEMBER LIBRARIES WERE COMPARED WITH COMBINED COSTS OF OTHER NONMEMBER INSTITUTIONS. IT WAS HYPOTHESIZED THAT THE COST PER MEMBER LIBRARY IN A CENTRALIZED SYSTEM FOR A GIVEN QUALITY OF TECHNICAL PROCESSING WOULD BE LESS THAN THE COST OF SIMILAR TECHNICAL…

Discusses the cost-billing procedures implemented by a private company library. Formulae for billing are explained in the context of provision of commercial services at competitive market prices within a balanced budget. (JKP)

As users become aware of the complexities of information handling, there is greater acceptance of fees for online searching. This results in accelerated demands upon supportive services, the cost of maintaining services increases, and libraries must charge fees to minimize these costs. The trend toward personalized services for individual users…

Academic libraries, enjoying their status as "the heart of the college," have been receiving fatter and fatter portions of institutional budgets. With the "new depression," they will now be hard hit. (Author)

This report presents a model developed to examine costs of public library services, such as reference, circulation, and special programs, to be used by librarians in implementing a program budget and planning a budget system. Allocations for personnel costs, materials costs, costs of supplies and services, technical processing costs, reference use…

The results of a two-month study on the costs of interlibrary loans at a small university are presented by using comprehensive tables. (3 references) (DH)

The case study considers the technical aspects, not the principles, involved in charging the public for the use of lending library service. After examination of the present service it is felt that the following four systems of charge are possible: (1) subscription, or membership surcharge; (2) a unit issue charge; (3) a book reservation charge and…

"The purpose of this paper is to bring to computer professionals a realistic view of what a large library is and what the jobs and costs are which a librarian must worry about. Written by the director of libraries at MIT. (Author/LS)