Over the last few days, I have been exchanging emails with the chief librarian at my university to find out how much Springer charges us for access to its LNCS proceedings series. My enquiries were prompted by some remarks from a colleague from outside Iceland who told me that her library will likely stop subscribing to LNCS starting in 2011.
Yesterday, my contact at our library wrote to me saying that LNCS is not part of the Icelandic National Licence to Springer journals, SpringerLINK. Our library used to buy it as a special subscription and we had a deal with Springer for a three year period. This subscription was one of the special subscriptions we had to cancel after the financial crisis. She also told me that the subscription fee for access to LNCS for the year 2009 was the "special price" of 7.566,00 EUROS. (I wonder what the standard price is.)
I wonder whether your library will continue subscribing to LNCS. (Do post a comment if you have any information on this!) Times are hard for everyone, or so it seems, and perhaps university libraries are becoming more selective in choosing what journals and proceedings series they subscribe to.
