RLUK

Date: 09 December 1999 
 

CURL ENDORSES ACTION BY DUTCH LIBRARIANS 
 

The UKB consortium in the Netherlands, which comprises academic libraries have recently issued a policy statement on the pricing of academic journals. This highlights the ongoing problems faced by librarians in meeting unreasonable price increases for academic journals and suggests that solutions must be sought at national or even international level. A five-point action plan is laid out which includes:

UKB has invited other libraries to publicly support this initiative.

CURL (the Consortium of University Research Libraries) represents the libraries of the universities of Birmingham, Cambridge, Durham, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, King’s College London, London (Senate House), Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham, Oxford, Imperial College London, London School of Economics, Sheffield, Southampton, University College London, Warwick, and Trinity College Dublin. In addition, the British Library, the national libraries of Scotland and Wales, and the Wellcome Institute are in associate membership, and SAS (School of Advanced Study) belongs as a co-operating member. It thus includes within its membership the national legal deposit libraries and the libraries of the major research led universities, whose collections are fundamental to the continuing strength of UK academic research.

The problems of spiralling inflation for scholarly journals, accelerated by the demand for and costs of electronic access, are now a matter of critical concern to the members of CURL, who represent some of the largest customers for scholarly publications in the UK. Many of the demands which have traditionally been made by publishers in terms of cancellation clauses, subscription increases well above national inflation rates and the rise in library budgets, are no longer sustainable.

Given that the present environment for scholarly communication is volatile and challenging, CURL feels that there are significant advantages to be gained by publishers and libraries collaborating on the investigation of alternative paradigms particularly within the context of electronic commerce and pricing strategies.

CURL fully endorses the initiative of UKB and will be actively considering its own contributions to this endeavour.

CURL will be publicising its efforts in this area and will be maintaining close contact with its sister organisations nationally and internationally in order to share information. 
 

For further information contact:

	Chris Bailey
Executive Secretary