United States Code Annotated (USCA)

I need your opinions quickly on this. The USCA subscription costs us nearly $2500 per year to keep it up to date. It is all online here http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/ and here http://www.gpoaccess.gov/uscode/index.html (although I do find the online hard to use). Do we use the paper edition enough to justify the expense?

I have no plans of getting rid of the NJ Statutes or the NJ Administrative Code. I think we should keep these despite being also online.

The WestLaw pricing for this stuff is very complicated. We pay approximately $300 per month for the WestLaw database, which no one ever uses (and probably never will). However, since we subscribe to that, we get all our print subscriptions at half price, which actually nets us some savings. However, if we cut the print USCA, the database will actually start costing us money, which we cannot justify. So, clear as mud? (Told you it was complicated).

Let me know what you think as soon as possible, since we have to make a decision on this by Friday 1/30.

Marquis Who's Who on the Web

This week we are looking at a database. Marquis Who's Who on the Web costs $1195 per year. We also still get the paper copy which costs $354 per year. This database is only available within the library. There is no remote access.

As usual, the question is, do we use this enough to make it worth the price? And when we do use it, does it retrieve informtion that answers questions? Is there enough unique information here that is not available in the paper copy? Can we give up the paper copy?

Usage stats are as follows: Jan 4; Feb 8; Mar 11; April 5; May 25; June 15; July 1; Aug 3; Sept 15; Oct 3; Nov 26 (when KF was researching it for her biographical databytes). Unfortunately the way the stats only record searches; they do not record if information was retrieved in the search.

In this year of cutbacks, is this a critical and necessary database? For your information, I have just renewed the Gale Biographical Resource database at the whopping cost of $ 3098 per year (however this does have remote access). At KF's biographical databytes it was generally agreed that this is a critical and necessary database.