Greetings:
Yesterday, during the monthly Westlaw visit, I showed a copy of the new Chicago Zoning Code to the Westlaw representative. As I did, he expressed delight, saying "they" want the reps to suggest names of new companies that can be acquired. The new publisher is a small company.
Well, the last thing I want to do is to help Thomson West swallow up smaller companies and eventually increase prices and decrease competition, as they have been doing for years. Additionally, we all know the problems created for the customer when systems are merged together, so I really want no part of this.
So while I regretted showing this item to the rep, I did appreciate someone from Thomson West showing their true colors, which really comes as no surprise. This is what they do. And as a result, we see exorbitant pricing when the cost of some supplements can be the same as the cost of buying a title anew.
The incident makes me not want the rep in my office anymore and reminds me of years ago when I worked in a law firm library. The Lexis rep examined the printouts on the Westlaw printer and then called the attorney to tell him or her how the search could be performed better or with better results on Lexis. And when caught by the library director, the Lexis rep denied it.
Does anyone have similar experiences?
Scott Burgh
Chief Law Librarian
City of Chicago Department of Law Library
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Apr 09 2008 - 10:48:49 PDT