Competition and cooperation:  Libraries and publishers
          in the transition to electronic scholarly journals




                           Andrew Odlyzko
                        AT&T Labs - Research
                        amo@research.att.com

                          Revised version
                          April 27, 1999



Abstract

The conversion of scholarly journals to digital format is proceeding
rapidly, especially for those from large commercial and learned
society publishers.  This conversion offers the best hope for survival
for such publishers.  The infamous "journal crisis" is more of a
library cost crisis than a publisher pricing problem, with internal
library costs much higher than the amount spent on purchasing books
and journals.  Therefore publishers may be able to retain or even
increase their revenues and profits, while at the same time providing
a superior service.  To do this, they will have to take over many of
the function of libraries, and they can do that only in the digital
domain.  This paper examines publishers' strategies, how they are
likely to evolve, and how they will affect libraries.