SCALING THE TOWER OF BABEL: CHALLENGES IN LIBRARY ACQUISITION OF DIGITAL RESOURCES

Since the birth of the web, libraries have grappled with wave after wave of changes in the publications they buy and the processes required to buy them. The earliest web products, primarly electronic journals offered with PDF images, exploded the print-based purchasing model by introducing site licensing, detailed signed license agreements, and serious issues related to performance reliability and pricing models. Since the initial ejournals hit the market, every year has brought a new and more complex challenge to the purchase process. Not only are licenses now the dominant mode of purchase, but publisher's offerings have become vastly more complicated, both in terms of pricing models and product functionality; there is a less direct relationship to print versions; more variety in organization of information, including a wide range of styles for offering historical content and managing access to content; legal complexities altering database content; changes in the services offered by the key 'stable' third-party gateways for ejournals; the advent of exploding models for ebook delivery and pricing; and growing gaps between the amount of material available and desired and the amount that can be afforded. One ARL library's responses to these trends will be discussed.