Library subscription decisions

About 50 000 journals of significance for research are currently being published. No library, not even the largest, can afford to subscribe to more than a small fraction of the total needed by its readers. This forces the library to make a selection from among those published. The library´s problem is which titles to select and how to provide its readers with access to those it cannot subscribe to. Publishers fear that access to journals by photocopy or on interlibrary loan will reduce their subscriptions. There is no evidence that libraries are not now subscribing to all of the journals they can afford or will not continue to do so. Any increase in the cost of providing access to those titles to which a library can not subscribe, or in the cost of journal subscriptions, can only further reduce the number of titles a library can buy. The only solutions are 1) cheaper forms of publication than the present conventional journal or 2) cheaper access to that which the library cannot afford.