turbulent in recent years, we have seen how the economic crisis and its consequences know no countries or institutions, or companies, or any other distinction.
However, the tense situation even more (if possible) when the capacities of research and development of a country is at risk. This is what is happening with the university libraries in the UK, as it appears in a news The Wall Street Journal .
The British government of Prime Minister David Cameron has launched a series of demanding reforms to achieve a drastic reduction of public deficit. These measures include a reduction of 40% of public funds provided to the university. To compensate for this measure, starting next year the amount of tuition fees will triple, which has provoked an intense unrest among young Britons, we have seen in the many Recent demonstrations have taken place in central London.
Amid this gloomy picture, there are the British university libraries, with increasing budgetary constraints and an uncertain future. And to make matters worse, scientific publishers will require an increase of 3 to 6% of subscriptions to scientific journals. This has already begun to be terminated by the university and research libraries, which have made a statement calling on publishers to recognize the reality of the current budget and therefore moderate their prices. Otherwise, the Consortium of Research Libraries Britain has said it will be forced to cancel a large number of subscriptions, which seriously compromise the research capacity of the United Kingdom.
spokesman John Wiley & Sons has recognized the uncertain future which follows on the financing of the libraries, because of the economic downturn. At the same time, believes that these statements public libraries are an effective tool for negotiation (as a way to downplay the reality of recent years, with constant price increases.) Then pledged that Wiley will work with customers to save reductions budget and stated that they have a history of similar commitments.
Reed Elsevier spokesman also pledged to work with libraries in the United Kingdom and said that trying to reduce the cost thereof by the transfer of print subscriptions to electronic.
The world of subscriptions to scientific journals is stormy and complicated, as many of you @ s you know, since the cost reduction over the electronic version of journals is highly debatable, accompanied by the problem of electronic version only requires access to it, not its ownership. Therefore, when a library decides not to renew your subscription to a particular title, no longer has access to both new issues and former (which I signed).
On the other hand, is the purchasing of electronic journals, which reduces the price per journal, but has the disadvantage of integrating with relevant journals and magazines as minor. Perhaps in another post took up this theme of electronic subscriptions, which is very extensive and complicated.
The key to the problems of university and research libraries is in the affirmation of the media analyst Claudio Aspesi: not can take as eternal prices increased faster than the budget of the customers . Mr. Aspesi believes that the subscription rates for electronic packages have been growing faster than annual inflation at around 4.5 and 5.5%. This situation could be maintained only with great difficulty, in years of economic boom. In fact, the Consortium SCONUL (Society of College, National and University Libraries) increased their spending at a rate of 4% per annum between 2004 and 2008. However, as the economic outlook has worsened, the problem has surfaced in all its harshness.
In any case, there is a problem that only affects the United Kingdom, is a global problem that concerns all European countries (of course, also in Spain), United States, also including China, where a group of more than 30 librarians from the best universities country have reported that some publishers are proposed price increases above 14%, following increases of 10% over the last three years. And we know that China's economy is not exactly in crisis. But such increases are unassumable, even for the largest emerging economy.
libraries are always in a crisis situation. However, namely libraries research university and not long ago were in such a complicated situation, as we said before, not only compromises the future of their collections, but also the research and development of countries. We will have to follow the evolution of this problem, and that its resolution does not appear to be close or be easy, given the conflicting interests.
Note: link to original article published in The Wall Street Journal on November 25, 2010, written by Paul Sonne.
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