Is West Contributing Pricing Information for the Next Edition of the AALL Price Index?

According to the November issue of the AALL E-Newsletter, the answer is "yes."

I'm happy to report that all four major legal publishers will contribute pricing information for the 7th edition of the AALL Price Index for Legal Publications. The Price Index for Legal Publications Committee is responsible for producing the index and has begun to compile 2009 pricing data for the next edition, which will be released in the spring. This publication is available only to AALL members and provides comparative information about legal publishers' pricing in order to help libraries with budgeting and collection management decisions. 
 
In gathering information for the index, the committee asks publishers to provide their pricing. Major publishers participating in this edition include: BNA, LexisNexis, Thomson Reuters, and Wolters Kluwer Law & Business.

-- AALL President Catherine Lemann

This should be interesting. Of course, I'll be waiting for Ken Svengalis' next edition of Legal Information Buyer's Guide & Reference Manual for a reality check. Hopefully the folks in the land of 10,000 invoices play it straight because there are plenty of invoice-paying law librarians who will take West to task if the Company doesn't.

About the email-distributed version of the November issue of the AALL E-Newsletter, a colleague emailed me a question I could not answer because I've been taking AALL's Latest News RSS feed to catch the e-newsletter. She asked:

I'm wondering if this email always had advertising on it?  Or I am just noticing it for the first time???

In a later email, she added:

The price index item next to the ad is a definite WTF ?? (as the kids would say!)

Priceless.

She's referring to this Thomson Reuters banner ad above AALL's e-newsletter header image:

Priceless indeed. Hopefully the AALL Price Index for Legal Publications will be worth the time it takes to download in the spring. Until then, one question: is West's $75,000.01 or more gold sponsorship check for next year's annual meeting in the mail? From LLB's Aug. 9, 2009 post Message from West on AALL Sponsorship Policy:

It’s true that AALL is not accepting sponsorship dollars from West for 2008-2009 because West does not participate in the Price Index for Legal Publications.  It has been West’s position for many years that the retail pricing model laid out by the Price Index for Legal Publications does not accurately reflect the prices our customers typically pay. Our retail prices are easily and clearly available on the West Web site. However, we work closely with our customers to give them the information and flexibility they require to best plan their budgets and collections, and so we approach pricing on an account-by-account basis – which, by the way, is not uncommon in the industry. Our view is that whether an index is produced by a private publisher or trade association, more often it serves to confuse than clarify.

-- Anne Ellis, Senior Director, Librarian Relations, West

Perhaps AALL should spend some of its West advertising dinero on hiring Ken Svengalis as a consultant for the forthcoming Price Index.

Endnote. On West "work[ing] closely with [their] customers to give them the information and flexibility they require to best plan their budgets and collections," see LLB's survey results and survey takers' comments:

• Findings on Reasonableness of Annual Price Increases for Products and Services Offered by BNA, LexisNexis, West and Wolters Kluwer, and
• Customer Services Findings for BNA, LexisNexis, West and Wolters Kluwer

 [JH]