Buying whatever they are pushing.

Publishing in the Higher Education world receives some of its support from journal subscriptions of libraries.  While in the past librarians played key roles in the selection of these items today with the rise of aggregaters like Ebsco, the decision becomes less about content and more about the IR system and the price.  With package deals such as Academic Search Elite or Curriculum Essentials, it is difficult to know what exactly one is buying.  The vendors push various products claiming more full-text or more images but deciding which one offers the most quality can be overwhelming due to the sheer number of titles.  Having access to so many titles is surely a good thing, but not so when the overall quality is lacking.  The task of deciding which aggregaters to license is beyond most individuals capacities.  These products have not been around long enough for us to truly know how to best to evaluate.  Often purchasing decisions are made on usage statistics alone, which may have more to do with product placement than quality content.  What’s even more troubling concerning purchasing quality content is how deals are negotiated by vendors.  Whereas with the onslaught of electronic publishing journals and publishers dealt with all the major vendors, now we are seeing more exclusive contracts such as the one between Ebsco and Time Inc.  Our reliance upon big vendors to tell us what to buy, causes concern for the role of academic libraries in supporting scholarly publishing.