Lister Hill Letter
Newsletter of the Lister Hill Library of the Health Sciences at UAB

March/April 1997

LHL Institutes Printing Charges

The library is funded principally through state money. We do not receive any funding from tuition or student fees. Forty percent of our budget goes to pay for books and journals, and those costs have been increasing nearly 15% per year every year for more than a decade. Since state funding is likely to be flat for some time, it is necessary that we look very carefully at all of our financing.

The charges that we are putting in place cover the cost of paper, toner, maintenance of the printers, and a small portion of student assistant salaries. University Service Center rules require that we recalculate our charges every six months. At the present time it will be FOUR cents per page. That may go up or down slightly when we recalculate at the end of the summer, depending on usage.

We feel that it is imperative that we start charging because of the increasing availability of full text through the World Wide Web and through the Core Biomedical Collection on OVID. With the World Wide Web, patrons have access to a tremendous number of resources, and frequently will want to print some of what they find. We are in the process of adding over forty-five full text journals to the OVID system. We simply cannot afford to provide free printing from those resources. Unfortunately, because of the way the Core Biomedical Journals are integrated into the OVID system, it is not possible to charge only for printing full-text and not charge for abstracts or citations.

We deeply regret the inconvenience that these charges will cause, but we feel that it is the only fair and appropriate way to cover the cost of providing printing from the wide variety of electronic resources that we now have to offer. We welcome any suggestions or comments that you may have on how best to deal with this dilemma.