Comments on: The high cost of everything

By: Danielle Plumer

Danielle Plumer — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 18:40:30 +0000

I’ve asked around, and people who organize a lot of meetings don’t think that the $995 for Internet access is that insane. The problem is that TLA has refused to pay those prices in the past, with the result that we haven’t had Internet access. My approach is to build those costs in to the price of the workshop or conference. If TLA did this on a conference-wide basis, we’d probably even get a discount, as we did on the A/V equipment (which *only* cost $309 for the day; catering makes up the bulk of the cost, at almost $20 per person). I’m happy to say that although LIRT isn’t making a lot of money, we aren’t losing any, either!

Danielle Cunniff Plumer
Chair, Library Instruction Round Table
Texas Library Association

By: Jamie

Jamie — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 18:28:46 +0000

I have to say that I am sometimes surprised by the disconnect that people have between the costs and the usage. Myself included.

Since I became a systems librarian, I now have much more access to the stats and the costs involved. But as Brian points out just giving a value based on cost/usage can be somewhat misleading.

By: jessamyn

jessamyn — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 15:10:23 +0000

I’m info-savvy but have rarely been in a purchasing position in the library jobs I’ve had.

When I worked at a public library job, we spent a lot of time trying to figure out which databases to keep, but the bulk of them were through the state so we didn’t pay costs directly. The few that we did pay for included Novelist and, I think. Heritage Quest and one other directory-type service. It may have been that the people I worked with didn’t have the numbers to do dollars-per-session breakouts because I remember overall numbers [costs per year or what have you] but I may have assumed much higher usage rates.

By: Patricia Thompson

Patricia Thompson — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 12:08:59 +0000

I am surprised that someone as information-savvy as you did not realize the cost of library databases. This is not a personal insult– nobody can know everything.

I have noticed that most of the library blogs are written by librarians in reference or public services. I think many libraries do not communicate among themselves very well, especially across that outdated but sometimes still cavernous divide between “technical” and “public” services. Just an observation.

Pat Thompson

By: jessamyn

jessamyn — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 04:46:21 +0000

Whoops, sorry, I even knew that. I edited the post, thank you for pointing that out.

By: Ann Ewbank

Ann Ewbank — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 04:27:42 +0000

You state that the AZ Library Association is charged $995 per day for Internet access. The commenter is referring to TxLA. Can you change your post for accuracy? Thanks, Ann