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>> List members may be interested to know that the Royal Historical Society's >> online bibliography of British and Irish history, which has, until now, been >> free to use, is to be handed over to a commercial institution and a >> subscription fee will be charged from 1 January 2010. >> >> <http://www.history.ac.uk/partners/rhs-bibliography/faq> >> > This is bad but probably by now inevitable. For the sake of those who are not > members of rich institutions I think that the RHS should be encouraged to add > a pay-for-use tariff as well as an annual subscription. Unless the > subscription is very small, which seems unlikely, local authority libraries > and schools are not going to pay. Does anybody know what the subscription > will be? This is very bad. Recently, one of the librarians for history at my university gave a talk on digital resources; one of her major points was that they were getting too expensive for the library. They have already doubtful that they would purchase a couple of major primary source collections due to cost, and this is a well-funded library. But the publishers keep increasing journal prices, database prices, etc, and the libraries can't keep up. Even if the rates are somewhat reasonable, they may not be able to pay them because the rates for other electronic resources are too high. (It's a system-wide problem.) I have been praising the RHS bibliography to my fellow students and scholars as an example of an important scholarly resource which was not locked behind a subscription wall; it saddens me deeply to see this change. There are so many students and scholars in the world who are not affiliated with universities, or whose universities who may not be able to afford or who may not be willing to pay for a site license for the resources they need. As Helen Good points out, local authority libraries and schools likely won't purchase access; many smaller colleges and universities in North America may not either, let alone universities in the developing world. And while a pay-per-use might be preferable to no access, many poorer users would think twice before using it; I would likely turn to another service, or perhaps just a university library catalogue, though that is nowhere near as usable or as complete as the RHS bibliography. When scholarly resources go for profit, some things may be improved a little - though I don't think the RHS bibliography needs anything; it already has a very clean and user-friendly interface. But there is also much to be lost. Sincerely, Julie Bowring PhD Candidate in History, Yale University
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