Shedding West at Stanford Law Library

Stanford's Paul Lomio has to cut his law library budget by 15%. How? Let's start with West. On Legal Research Plus, Lomio writes "We are shedding West publications left and right (mainly because of, in my opinion, outrageous annual price increases), and our patrons (all of whom know our first names) are doing just fine, producing outstanding scholarship and achieving significant clinical victories." See his post for a pricing illustration.

This brings me back to the point of my post yesterday, Another Boner from West: "Hi, my first name is Joe and I'm a law librarian." It's time for West to agree to provide some short-term relief by

1. moderating its historical price increases for print continuations for the next year or two by cutting them in half to an average 6-7%;

2. fully disclosing pricing information for the AALL Price Index; and

3. committing to freezing its annual price increases when multi-year Westlaw contracts come up for renegotiation during each law library's forthcoming round of Westlaw bargaining.

Or face the consequences. Once titles are canceled, the odds law libraries, including great academic libraries like Sanford, will pick them up later when library finances improve are slim. [JH]