Dear friends, The differencial pricing for books in foreign currency has become a matter of concern to librarians, especially after EU adopted currency Euro. I wish to share our experience and invite your experience, comments, suggestions in the matter. Recently we purchased "Handbook of Nanotechnology" by Bhushan, B published by Springer(ISBN : 3-540-01218-4). While processing processing the invoice, we have noticed the following discrepancies : 1. The price mentioned in the invoice (EURO 249.00) and the price mentioned by the requester (USD 199.00) although different both are correct. 2. The price proof produced by the vendor, taken from the WEB (URL not given) 3. We visited the Springer site at http://www.springeronline.com/ and noticed different prices when checked depending upon the route as follows - Europe General, Asia, Africa: EURO 249.00 Germany: EURO 266.43 United Kingdom: Pound 191.50 North America, South America: USD 199.00 Switzerland: SFr 421.00 4. Amazon sells this book at the price USD 199.00, As you can see there is a huge difference in price of about Rs 5000. When enquired the vendors tell us that they procure through European sources and hence charge in EURO. Even if we give handling and postage charges to Amazon we not only save good amount, but get the document faster. In this particular case since the basic cost is more Amazon could be a solution. But why should we give such high prices? Can we not force the publishers to adopt single price? Why not Vendors use their US contacts to supply books at US $ price? Another interesting thing we notice is some Vendors publish the publishers catalogue locally to suit them. This is the case with journals too. We face problems while passing the bills as our accounts raise objections in such cases. How should we satisfy audits? One possibility is that we can demand the original invoice received by Vendors from publishers. Friends you too would have come across many such situations. Your reactions please! Goudar -------------------------------------------------------------------------- I.R.N. Goudar Tel: 91-80-25086081 Head, Information Centre for 91-80-25235315 Aerospace Science and Technology Fax: 91-80-25268072 National Aerospace Laboratories E-mail:goudar@css.nal.res.in Airport Road http://www.icast.org.in/staff1.htm BANGALORE-560 017 India