I was very intrigued by Marilyn's question.   I seem to recall that the library at a high-profile university canceled its subscription to ScienceDirect a few years ago.  Did they reinstate their original print subscriptions?

Yes, print has its drawbacks, but I am reminded of the line about a thankless child when people make disparaging remarks about print.   Yes, the advantages of online access are well known, and I agree that paper indexes were a huge pain.  However, if one is having to pay ever-increasing and budget-crippling fees for the privilege of online access, I wish more of us could afford the space to send these publishers the message that we won't be held hostage by their pricing policies.

In our case, we have added a few print subscriptions back when the titles either disappeared out of a full-text database, or we found that an embargo had been added or extended.  So far, we haven't had to cancel any online journal packages, but I can almost see it coming, with the recent addition of "Unique Title List" fees and with some publishers pulling their content out of certain databases. And some publishers are stipulating that we must pay for new titles that they take over from other publishers whether we want those titles or not.  I can understand they want their revenue, but then the supplier of the database refuses to lower the price in line with the lost content, while the other publisher expects us to pay for content we don't want.   Sure, they add new content, but our students and faculty were accustomed to the content that was taken away!  It would be nice to have some say in whether we want to pay for the substituted content or not!!

Anyhow, I can't say that we have done any wholesale converting back to print, and we don't have to space to do it, either, but I will certainly be curious to see other responses. People do get spoiled once online access is introduced, and it is a big mess to have gaps in holdings.  Backfile volumes can get very expensive, too.   Yes, print is limited, but it was better than nothing for many, many years and still at least is less prone to schizophrenic pricing models.

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Sarah Tusa, Associate Professor
Coordinator of Collection Development
& Acquisitions
Mary & John Gray Library
Lamar University
Ext. 8125