From: "Harriston, Victoria" <[log in to unmask]> Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2012 09:39:30 -0500 Good morning Ann, Here at the National Academies, (National Academy of Sciences) Research Center, I am responsible for brokering our digital content procurements. Using end of year funds which can only be expensed for "one-time" purchases, we have been able to add several electronic journal back files to our content portfolio. Most of these collections are perpetually licensed by the National Academies. I had no option but to expense all of the funds at one time since our financial practices do not allow carryover of funds to the next year for purchases made within the current funding year. I hope this information helps and if anyone has any questions please don't hesitate to contact me. Victoria Victoria Harriston Manager - National Academies Research Center Email: [log in to unmask] | Phone: 202-334-2327 -----Original Message----- 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])