From: "Sowards, Steve" <[log in to unmask]> Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2012 17:13:39 +0000 Dear Ann, At Michigan State, we too usually avoid multi-year purchases because of uncertainty about future budgets. In some cases, vendors have been willing to take two payments during the same calendar year (which may be their fiscal year) allowing us to pay at the end of one FY (say, in June) and again as the new FY begins (in July). Managing two annual payments feels less risky in general than three or more ... by late spring we have a fair idea of what the new budget will look like. --Steve Steven Sowards Associate Director for Collections Michigan State University Libraries 100 Library East Lansing MI 48824 -----Original Message----- From: LibLicense-L Discussion Forum [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of LIBLICENSE Sent: Sunday, February 26, 2012 6:28 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Paying for library database purchases From: Ann Shumelda Okerson <[log in to unmask]> Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2012 17:44:20 -0500 Dear library readers: Many of our libraries and consortia make outright purchases of electronic databases, such as archival, historical, news, governmental, and the like (I'm excluding current e-book collections or current e-journal subs). These may be one-time purchases, or one-time perhaps with some token annual hosting fees. My question is, under what circumstances do you prefer to purchase over time (e.g., 2 or more annual payments) as opposed to paying for the whole database outright? Why would you choose one or the other of these methods in any given case? Have you regretted one or the other choice? Do most publishers provide the option of payment over time for a data base that costs, say, $30K and up? Any who don't? (I write this as one who's generally followed a practice of not buying a database unless we know we can pay for it all within a fiscal year, rather than making "time" payments, because who knows what a future budget year will bring, but I realize that's probably quite old-fashioned.) Many thanks for your thoughts. Ann Okerson ([log in to unmask], or [log in to unmask])