This is a busy time for our library sales team and their customers. A small group of us met this week with around 90 representatives of library consortia. Attendees ranged from Australia to Turkey and around the world to the US. SAGE was invited to present to them about our business and what options we could offer to librarians in hard financial times. There was much discussion about the need for flexibility to choose the journals that their partons really need and some speculation that the so-called “big deal” is under pressure from library cutbacks.
This echos the conclusions of a report widely circulated on the impact of the Big Deal on publisher finances. Reed Elsevier – The Inevitable Crunch Point (http://bit.ly/dWUrwB) reviews the current market conditions and speculates on the impact this might have on one large journal publisher. At this time, SAGE is seeing excellent rates of renewal for its journal packages but this is definitely a trend to watch.
Coming up next week is the Association of College and Research Libraries annual meeting in Philadelphia and a busy meeting for SAGE. If you happen to be there come along and meet us at the stand.
SAGE Connection 