feel that nip in the air? the mornings are cool, and the sun rises a bit later and sets a bit earlier. that can only mean one thing: it’s subscription renewal season! this is the time of year that library acquisitions departments are busiest. we burrow into lists of journal subscriptions to look at usage statistics from the past year and projected prices for the upcoming year, to make predictions about what we think we will use and can afford in the next calendar year.
usually by now our main subscription vendor has sent a renewal invoice with prices of what it thinks the subscriptions will cost over the next year. based on this renewal invoice we look at the total amount of money the subscriptions will cost, gasp out loud, and talk amongst ourselves. we cross through titles on the renewal invoice (cancellations), add new titles (additions), change access methods (cancel print, retain online, please!) and return to the vendor a spreadsheet of all the changes. the vendor then sends us a new invoice and we confirm it. since the vendor is estimating the prices of the subscriptions, over the next calendar year we will receive invoices for added charges, or extra money we owe because a subscription costs more than the vendor predicted. hopefully when we made our budget request for the upcoming year we were able to get a ten percent increase over last year’s budget to account for inflating prices of our current subscriptions.
in addition to paying our main subscription vendor, we deal with individual publishers and consortia to negotiate prices for the upcoming subscription year for special journal packages. this is exciting because we control our fiscal fate in a way that we don’t when we deal with our subscription vendor; by using a subscription vendor they do the dealing for us, which is convenient but hands-off from our perspective. by seeking out individual publishers and consortia for certain journal packages we do our own negotiations, which is very hands-on but also uncertain. it depends on one’s negotiating power to determine what prices you pay for publisher packages.
all of these wheelings and dealings go on behind the scenes, which is where acquisitions usually happens. i bet you didn’t know how busy we were this time of year! send us some chocolate or buy us a cup of coffee; we’re tired!
