(by guest blogger John Blossom, President, Shore Communications Inc.) Hal Espo, President of Contextual Connections, LLC, lead a panel of intitutional buyers including Lucy Lettis, SVP for Marsh, Inc., Jim Neal, VP of Information Services for Columbia University, Susan Tarr, an Executive Director fpr FLICC at the Library of Congress and Julia Urwin, Global Content Manager for AstraZenica. While some of the session turned into the usual demands for pricing flexibility from premium vendors – “Just say ‘Yes'”, as Julia Urwin put it – other interesting trends surfaced. One of the key focuses was on the need for true assurance of archive access on content purchases. Susan Tarr pointed out that more than half of U.S. Federal library purchases are still done in print, in large part because of the uncertaintly of vendor archiving plans. Jim Neal of Columbia painted a picture of an institution that is increasingly aware of its role as a global distributor and publisher of content and therefore concerned about issues such as fair use policies that need to be at least as robust as those that academic institutions have come to expect from print publishers. Lucy Lettis and others emphasized the need to present much more simple content presentation solutions with “the best few options” to users who are used to Google-like simplicity. Institutional purchasers are increasingly sophisticated in their outlook on content, both from the standpoint of managing it and creating and retaining the value of their own publishing streams. They still look to content vendors for many of their solutions, but with major institutions increasingly viewing expertise in content management as a core competency, content companies will find themselves increasingly in partnership with clients who are becoming more peer-like in their content capabilities very rapidly.
This coverage is sponsored by HighBeam Research.
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