As requested by several librarians, this summarizes replies to last
week's question about methods used to estimate print material costs.
Clearly, there is no one size fits all solution, and many of us struggle
to find one that fits our library or firm-most years. Thanks to all
Linda Heatherly
Supervising Librarian, Legislative Counsel Library, Sacramento,
California
In doing my budget, I generally use about 8% per year for Lexis and
12-15% for West. I actually go through data each year to see how much
I've spent with each publisher, how much major titles have increased,
what I've cut or sent back, etc. For Lexis, their print Shepards tend
to go up a lot, so if you have lots of those or none of those that would
influence the increase quite a bit.
The other publishers I buy from I only get a few titles each, so I will
actually look at specific titles. So I don't have any general numbers
on those.
Clark County Law Library
NH Law Library
I use 11% across the board, but to tell you the truth, that figure is
left over from the previous law librarian and I don't know how she came
up with it. AALL maybe? We've only just automated our acquisitions
system so I don't have earlier figures to analyze to tell how well the
11% worked. I think it will take a couple of years before I can do that.
I always consider Ken Svengalis's advise wise and accurate.
Percentages of increase vary from year to year, and my library has kept
records of what we spent with particular publishers each year and then
compared from year to year. However, lots of circumstances can effect
what an individual library spends. I've managed to get my budgetary
authorities to accept a figure of 10% a year for the whole business, and
that has given us a generous amount to work with. Of course you have to
take into consideration how any flat-rate contracts with West and Lexis
affect your purchases of print publications.
West increases this year have been running at 11-12% if you don't have a
package deal with them.
Library Journal will be publishing figures for periodicals in their Apr.
15th issue.
I usually just throw darts.....
No, I assume a 6% increase for all publishers - which usually ends up
being about the average so it all evens out.
Keller and Heckman LLP
I have found that the average increase is more like 12% annually so that
has been the factor I figure in these days.
Semmes, Bowen & Semmes
We have been using an across-the-board 12% for print and 18% for
online.
HellerEhrmanLLP
It's so hard to know. At one point our West representative told us to
expect an overall increase of 12%, but he was trying to get us to sign
up for a library maintenance agreement at the time, so that figure may
be inflated. We are the state law library as well as the legislative
reference library, and we do a great deal of business with West. We did
sign up for the library maintenance agreement. It has given us
significant savings. Our costs are predictable over the life of the
contract, and annual increases are limited so something around 2%. Of
course, you must be committed to maintaining the titles you have now
over the life of the contract as well. Also, we were fortunate in that
the statutes purchased from West for the legislative committee rooms
were made part of the contract, resulting in additional savings. Prior
to the contract we devoted a significant amount of time every year to
canceling subscriptions so that our budget would balance.
Maine State Law and Legislative Reference Library
I know that our West rep has told us approx. 12%. That number isn't
really accurate... I guess that is why he said approx. but, it is closer
than 5-7% for Lexis. I hope that helps a bit!
State Library of Kansas
Thomson West is usually one of the highest, if not THE highest - I've
budgeted 10-13% for that publisher.
WilmerHale
Try looking at AALL's Price Index for Legal Publications on its web
site. It is a great source for this kind of information. --Lyn
Warmath
Hirschler Fleischer
As purchased from Thomson/West: In 2001 one volume of Texas Vernon's
Statutes was $48.50. These are now $83 - a 71% increase. In 2001 one
volume of Texas Cases was $76. These are now $131 - a 72% increase.
This is about a 12% increase per year.
Public Utility Commission, Austin, TX
I poll some of my colleagues at other large law firms in my city. I do
a book sample every year of about 20 serial titles. I call ThomsonWest
and Lexis Legal Publishing and ask them what their anticipated price
increase will be for print subscriptions. I then average all this. It
seems to work pretty well. Like you, I found that one source just
wasn't enough.
Calfee, Halter & Griswold LLP
[June 2006]: Svengalis "characterizes as a 'seismic shift' the
double-round of prices increases that he recently observed in Thomson
titles since February 2005. In 'ten years of tracking [Thomson] West
prices, or those of any of the major legal publishers,' he had never
seen prices for initial purchases increase twice in little more than a
year. Svengalis also identified increases in a sample of 25 legal
treatises. The median increase in prices for supplements was about 42%,
with increases varying from 18% to 142%."
http://www.nocall.org/djupdate/2006/Nickel%20Isnt%20Worth%20Dime%20Today
.html
I recall that I was relying on the 2006 edition of Svengalis, and relied
on his list-serv post (I think in March or April 06) to supplement his
data.
Howard-Rice LLP
Thomson West's marketing director made a statement several years ago
that they expected all print products of their legal serials, i.e.,
statutes, reporters, encyclopedias, etc., to increase at an annual rate
of 12 to 16 percent for the indefinite future. The comment was made when
they were initiating those sales of combo print-online and print-disc
subscriptions, with the notion that users would be weaned off the print
products and move to online. When I was at the San Diego County Public
Law Library, we took the statement as input for planning and adjusted
our collection development and planned increases in computer
workstations accordingly. We cancelled many sets of print products. CRIV
published a members' briefing about coping with these things in AALL
Sprectrum. I believe it was in the fall of 2005.
i figure 10 - 12% across board.
US Attorneys Office
Throughout the year, I keep track of the % of increase of one release
over the previous one. When budget time comes around, I simply scan /
eyeball this information and then come up with a rough average for each
publisher for each coconut. For the past few years, Thomson has
consistently averaged at 11 to 11.5% price increase for most releases.
Higher for annual loose-leaf subscriptions.
Smith, Anderson, Blount, Dorsett, Mitchell & Jernigan L.L.P.
THE FOLLOWING IS MATERIAL SUMMARIZING A SIMILAR QUESTION ASKED ON
WASHLAW.EDU LIST IN SEPT 2006.
________________________________
I ended up using a 15% increase in print materials. I looked at the
list of Thomson/West titles and the 2006 increases to the ones I
actually owned, then I looked at the actual costs in that budget line
item as compared to this time last year. I also took into consideration
the $48,000 in new titles purchased in the first 8 months of this year
and when I finished looking at all the elements, it was very close to
the 15% I eventually used.
Womble Carlyle, et al
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I'd go ahead and use the 13% figure, and if the committee protests, ask
them what they would prefer - the facts or wishful thinking.
Considering the rate of inflation in technology and HR, 13% may not seem
so bad.
I don't know if you break it down like this, but I always had two
categories - standing orders and a slush fund for new requests,
particularly new practices or lateral hires. If you can separate the
two, it may give a more accurate picture, and reduce that 13%.
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These percentage increases do border on the obscene, don't they?? I
usually call about 6 of the big vendors and average the numbers, with a
slight weight on the vendors with whom we do the most business.
However, I haven't done so yet for the 2007 budget year.
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I just use the figure that I've calculated (i.e. 13%) and explain that
we are always reviewing what we have and try to use the axiom "buy a new
one, give an old one up", but this does not always work. We are here to
service the client, after all. Usually when I offer the alternative of
either using treatises online which is many times more costly or getting
an online subscription which is even more, Last year this worked. I
have no idea which way the wind is blowing this year, however.
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I always struggle with the price increase question, and feel that I am
simply making up a number for the Budget Committee. I can come up with
numbers for particular initiatives, expansion of practice groups,
expansion of e-services, but what will it cost for us to keep our
existing collection current in the next year? The small percentage that
my firm allotted for cost of living increases, based on the CPI, seemed
irrelevant to the legal research market. But I needed current data. So
I tried a new approach this year. You are welcome to share my comments
with the listserv along with others that you have received.
In our HQ office library that supports 300 attorneys, we still maintain
a spreadsheet to record our library expenses. Expenses for most titles
(print and electronic) are recorded on a single row on the spreadsheet.
We record the publisher, info on the latest item paid, format and other
helpful information, and YTD cost for each title. Our current
spreadsheet includes the current year plus annual costs for an
additional two years.
I added a column between 2006 and 2005 numbers to compute the difference
between the two years. Immediately it became clear that I would need to
remove many titles from the mix. I limited my review to titles that had
payments in both 2005 and 2006. I removed titles that require multiple
payments during the year (since we haven't made payments for the last
3.5 months of 2006). I removed the city/county code titles; we usually
pay for those based on the size of the supplement. I removed titles for
which we had added or subtracted copies, number of users, or esubs in
which we added or deleted content. I removed other titles that have
irregular supplementation and any that had a new edition in 2005 or
2006. I tried to not remove titles that didn't support my case--there
are many titles that showed no increase, or only a tiny increase, and
even a handful with lower prices.
Curiosity led me to perform the same analysis on 2004-2005 expenses.
That was easier since both columns had figures for a full year. Using
the miracle of Excel sorting, the review of 2005-2006 and 2004-2005 took
1.5 - 2 hours. If I do it next year, it will go faster.
My conclusion: cost increases from 2005-YTD 2006: 12%. From
2004-2005: 8%.
This conclusion only applies to my library's collection based on an
admittedly unscientific and somewhat subjective methodology. I think
it's pretty accurate for my budget planning though, and is probably
typical of a large firm collection that is still largely print.
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I average the proposed increases from West and Lexis/MB and also use
Linda will's article on Strategic Budgeting from Legal Information Alert
v.24 n.2 Feb 2005 to assist me.
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I sympathize with your plight. I'm in the same boat, and wish I had an
M.B.A. in addition to the J.D. and M.L.I.S. I feel like I am stumbling
around in the dark. As a solo librarian, who serves pro se litigants,
attorneys, and judges, I find it extremely hard to even carve out time
for number crunching.
I have purchased two books in my quest for help in this area:
Daubert, M.J. (1993). Financial management for small and medium-sized
libraries. Chicago: American Library Association.
Hallam, A.W. & Dalston, T.R. (2005). Managing budgets and finances: a
how-to-do-it manual. New York: Neal-Schuman Publishers, Inc.
I keep our finances on Quickbooks Premiere Nonprofit edition 2006. It
has the ability to do pretty sophisticated forecasting. I haven't
mastered the use of this feature yet, but I feel better knowing that it
is there. Also, an accountant friend of mine gave me a linear
regression analysis.
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Having just completed this process myself I can share the method I use -
but it is a mathematical one. I calculate the percentage price increase
for the current year over the previous year on about 125 print titles
and find the overall average. The specific titles have changed somewhat
but the outcome is predictable. My records go back to 1995 which covers
the period during which so many of the legal publishers have been
bought/merged, etc., into the existing conglomerates we all deal with
now. Even with the changes in the industry the price increases have
been remarkable consistent.
1995 - 1996 7.5%
1996 - 1997 7.6%
1997 - 1998 6.4%
1998 - 1999 6.5%
1999 - 2000 7.7%
2000 - 2001 6.5%
2001 - 2002 6.5%
2002 - 2003 7.2%
2003 - 2004 7.0%
2004 - 2005 7.8%
2005 - 2006 7.6%
For the 11 year period the annual increase is 7.1%. I do the
calculation each year just to prove to myself that there are no
aberrations. For the 2007 budget year I asked for the 7.6% increase
only. I am unaware of any major changes in the areas of firm practice
so I assume I won't be buying or canceling anything that would have a
noticeable impact on the year end total. And it generally works out
that if we do drop an expensive set or two the savings will be offset by
adding some other title.
My budget categories are and always have been "Continuations" covering
any title being renewed and "New" for any print item being purchased for
the first time - monograph or otherwise.
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I use 10 percent increase across the board and I come very close each
year. Some things are more, some are less but it seems to even out.
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The Federal Reserve is projecting 2-2.25% core inflation rate in 2007
("core" is excluding food and energy). But of course library print
materials always seem to far exceed the overall inflation rate. So I try
to make an educated guess based on the past year's inflation rates.
For instance, I made an assumption (it's always good to list any
assumptions made on any spreadsheets you submit) that there would be no
dramatic increases in 2006, and used AALL's 2005 price indexes for legal
publications.
I used the indexes as follows: 80% x AALL's price index for reporters in
2005 (10.7%) + 20% of AALL's price index for legal encyclopedias (6.12%)
= overall inflation rate of 9.784% applied to last year's book prices.
You could weight each inflation rate differently and argue that
inflation will be higher, for instance, 90% x 10.7%, 10% x 6.12%. But I
think you're right to be on the conservative side.
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Yeah, I'm finding the YTDs are highly volatile. For us, some is driven
by timing of invoices payments - some were lost for awhile, some were
paid early in prior years, etc.
One of my approaches is to:
(1) get a vendor report from accounting
(2) separate the contracts from the serials/new if offered by the same
publisher, e.g. West & Lexis
(3) get the price increases included in the contracts and predicted for
their pubs
(4) multiple and add them all together
Ultimately, I think you'll get about 7% and of course that is such a
general guideline $# rather than a specific target/limitation because we
never know what our firms will do regarding adding or losing
lawyers/practice groups, clients, etc.
Put another way, I"m becoming cynical about the efficacy of our
budgeting process.
Hmm, I wonder if we librarians shoulder too much responsibility for
accurately predicting all the factors of the cost of legal information.
Or, perhaps we seek an unreasonable level of accuracy. My COO has little
trouble explaining away a budgetary difference of 1% to 2%, sometimes
even 4% or 5%. Put another way, what's the standard deviation on budget
predictions? (by some views it's as bad to come in under budget too much
as it is to come in over budget too much)
Oh, and another rant - take a look at whether West has republished any
of the volumes in your subscriptions. That will jump the prices. They've
been doing that this year to their Colorado Revised Statutes Annotated
in volumes that were far from being too full with a pocket part.
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