Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Rethinking Some Subscriptions

Every fall Jenny and I go through the magazine list to see what we might want to consider dropping due to price and use issues.

The first is an old friend that I never thought we'd ever want to be without--the NADA user guides. When I saw them in the list of subscriptions, I realized that I hadn't used either of them once all year, and even had a hard time remembering where we were keeping them (behind the reference desk). Combined the price is $159. All this info is online. In fact, I found out the rough trade in, average trade in, clean trade in and clean retail prices of my 2002 Acura adjusted for high mileage in about 30 seconds.
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The next title is R&D, subtitle "Technologies & Strategies that Enable Research and Development." It's $117 for 6 issues. I know we have an audience for the scientific magazines, such as Nature, Science, Bioscience, etc., but this one maybe not. Take a look at it.
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The next one is TDR: The Drama Review, subtitle "The Journal of Performance Studies." It's a whopping $199 for 4 issues. It is very academic--too academic? Too expensive? On the other hand, nearly all the larger public libraries in NJ have it.
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Let me know what you think. If you wish to keep them, by all means, speak up.