Serials Price Projections for 2011

Economic Outlook

The global economic outlook continues to be cloudy, and economic weakness in general is negatively affecting both libraries and publishers. In the United States, corporate profits have improved over the last twelve months as cost restructuring actions have boosted bottom line results. However, corporations appear unwilling to invest due to the uncertainties in the tax, political, and economic landscapes. As a result, revenue and spending growth remain very weak. Some economists in the United States have even begun to forecast a "double dip" recession in the near future driven by low consumer spending and a relatively high unemployment rate. With a few notable exceptions, such as Germany's relative economic strength driven by a robust export sector, the picture is not much better in the United Kingdom and continental Europe. High levels of national debt and the hangover from the housing market bubble weigh heavily on economies throughout the region. Moreover, the Greek debt crisis highlighted potentially serious fault lines in the Euro-zone countries. While the situation appears to be stable at the moment, another economic shock similar to the Greek situation would place significant pressure on the EU from a common currency standpoint.

Both in the United States and elsewhere around the world, the bottom line of the economic situation for libraries is that their budgets are suffering. Not only is endowment funding down significantly, but many libraries are also receiving a smaller portion in general of university budgets ( ARL Statistics 2007-2008 ) . The end result is that librarians must continue to support their institutions with a smaller slice of a smaller pie. In a recent EBSCO survey, a majority of our responding customers indicated that they were eliminating certain content purchases such as the print components of print + electronic combinations, low use electronic titles within e-packages (via unbundling when titles within a package are shown to receive minimal use) , and databases with the least unique content and coverage download