Hi, Rick:

How would you depict this graphically? I seem to end up with a traditional four cell matrix with, say, Likelihood on the vertical axis (lo/hi) and Impact on the horizontal axis (lo/hi). You have given two choices for the 4 cells of the matrix as:  Buy Direct and Go Aggregator. How would you distribute the two choices over the four cells of the matrix? Or, are there more choices? kst

Karen S. Tschanz,  M.L.S., M.B.A., M.S.O.D.
Asst. Prof./Chair, Content Management
Robert B. Greenblatt, M.D., Library, AB-241
Medical College of Georgia
1451 Laney-Walker Boulevard
Augusta, GA 30912
Phone: (706) 721-9912
Fax: (706) 721-6006
E-mail: ktschanz@mail.mcg.edu

>>> Rick Anderson <rick.anderson@UTAH.EDU> 07/18/2008 9:34 AM >>>
> As has already been said, I think it's very risky to cancel
> print in lieu of a title being available in an aggregated
> database.

Chad's absolutely right, of course.  The problem is that sometimes we
have no choice but to take risks that we would otherwise prefer to
avoid.

But it's also important that we think about risk in two dimensions:
likelihood and impact.  The impact of suddenly losing access to journal
A may be very slight, while for journal B it may be very great.
(Obviously, that's why research libraries tend to be happy having
aggregator access to Redbook, but try to maintain a direct subscription
to Science.)  Going aggregator-only for a given title greatly increases
the likelihood that access will be lost, but that's not the big
question: the big question is what the impact of that loss would be.

One salutary effect of a tight budget is that it pushes you to really
examine the impact risk for your journal collection.  The lower the
impact risk, the more "likelihood" risk you can afford to take.  And the
more low-impact journals you can push to an aggregator, the more
high-impact journals you can afford to buy directly.

---
Rick Anderson
Assoc. Dir. for Scholarly Resources & Collections
Marriott Library
University of Utah
rick.anderson@utah.edu
801-721-1687