Date: Tue, 6 Jul 2004 14:04:55 +0100 (BST) From: "[iso-8859-1] Prof. N. Laxman Rao." <naglaxman@yahoo.com> dear friends, i agree with the statements made by other friends. the difference is ssome time upto 7-8% i have collected data for a year and saw that the variation is too much. first of all we need to look for its legality. is GOC rates are legal? now neither ILA nor the Banks are participating in this program. some friends say that it has gone into pucca business minded people and the name of GOC is being exploited to a larger extent egarding the discount- many univs do not purchase if the discount is less than 15%- whatever the book may be. i have seen in aligarh muslim university the discounts r ranging upto 40% ( especially for medicine books) they r able to buy at a minimum of 20% why not other libraries? i think we need to examine this issue and seriously consider to join the hands to protect the interests of the libraries. laxman rao "G. K. Manjunath" <gkm@igidr.ac.in> wrote: I had gathered two years data to compare the difference between bank rate and GOC rate. I observed that the difference had exceeded 6% during some of the months during 2000 and 2001. During 1990's, the agreement between the then members of the Federation and librarians was to pay a markup of 2% over bank rate to negate the effect of fluctuations, which looked reasonable. Later, when this 2% markup was not agreable to the Federation, the librarians representing GOC withdrew. Some of the Delhi libraries are following ILA rates. Can I request the Delhi librarians to throw some light on it ? This issue of huge difference in exchange rate was discussed in a meeting organized by Mumbai's IASLIC chapter at British Library during April 2001. During this workshop I had made a small presentation on the data and suggested that bank rate for journals subscription. Majority of the members who were presented during the meeting agreed that libraries need to insist on Bank rate for journals, as the renewal is done once a year. To offset this problem in case of books, one can ask for more discount than recommended by GOC as this incovenient to check bank rate every day. Many booksuppliers are now offering 15% and some even 20%. Therefore, with this kind of arrangment, the GOC problem does not look too serious. G.K.MANJUNATH ************************************************** CHIEF LIBRARIAN INDIRA GANDHI INSTITUTE OF DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH FILM CITY ROAD ( GEN.VAIDYA MARG ) SANTOSH NAGAR GOREGAON ( EAST ) MUMBAI - 400 065 INDIA e-mail : gkm@igidr.ac.in http:// www.igidr.ac.in/lib/library.htm phone 22-8490653 ************************************************