X-ccMail-Date: 8/14/92 2:52PM
X-ccMail-*To: Nick G Carter
X-Envelope-to: cdromlan%idbsu.bitnet@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.cdromlan
Date:         Fri, 14 Aug 1992 17:24:00 PDT
              <CDROMLAN@IDBSU.BITNET>
From:         Nick G Carter <ng_carter@CCMAIL.PNL.GOV>
Subject:      licensing...
X-To:         cdromlan%idbsu.bitnet@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU

     I know this is a CD-ROM interest group, but as far as the licensing
     issue for database products a library might purchase, other media
     might be relevant to this discussion.  Current Contents from ISI is a
     case in point:  it is a floppy based product that can, and is expected
     to be, transferred to the user's hard disk; an individual subscription
     is about $400 per "issue" per year.  An issue covers a large number of
     journal titles in a subject area such as "Engineering, Technology, and
     Applied Science," or Life Sciences."

     Last year they came out with a network version of Current Contents,
     which I and probably many others, had been bugging them to do for
     about 2 years.  After much soul-searching, I subscribed to four of
     their issues under a concurrent, or simultaneous, user license for
     approximately $10K.  I believe that the network license specified 5
     simultaneous users.

     This year, they decided to charge by the number of people at a site,
     with a site license for 20 or more people costing $20K per issue.
     What I scraped my budget for last year at $10K would now cost me $80K!
     After a great number of discussion with all levels of people at ISI,
     we finally negotiated a cost of $30K.  I told them that this too was a
     ridiculous price, and did not renew our subscriptions.  We will buy
     single user copies for our branch libraries, and save a great deal of
     money by putting them on non-networked computers.  Of course, this
     makes it a little more difficult on our clients, but not to the tune
     of $20K per year.

     I don't know how many of you can sympathize with this, but in a
     situation such as ours, where we have a large number of people able to
     access our network applications (as opposed to most college library
     lans which seem to make applications available to all, but only from a
     certain number of defined terminals) THIS is a regressive licensing
     practice.  Now ISI is offering a CD-ROM version of the Science
     Citation Index with abstacts, also broken into "issues" such as
     Chemistry, and Materials.  Each SINGLE USER CD is $2K or more: you can
     bet that they will again charge exhorbitant fees to use these on a
     network.

     My answer to any company that is hard-nosed about negotiating
     individual contracts, which does not realize that CD-ROM and other
     electronic application budgets often come from the same meager budget
     that buys books and serials, is, "I will do without your product."  If
     enough of us approach the vendors with interest in their products, and
     say no to those that are exhorbitantly priced, maybe they will come to
     the realization that selling a thousand pieces at $500 makes more
     money for them than selling 50 pieces at $5000.


     Nick Carter
     Systems Administrator
     Hanford Technical Library
     Battelle Memorial Institute
     Pacific Northwest Lab., Richland, WA
     ng_carter@pnlg.pnl.gov
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