A Rough Road Ahead.

As libraries and the institutions that fund them prepare their 2010 budgets, things look grim. Both the Association of Research Libraries and the International Coalition of Library Consortia have issued statements calling on scholarly publishers to work with libraries to find common ground on materials pricing in a prolonged period of economic downturn. In response, database companies that sell mostly to libraries are preparing a variety of strategies to cope with their customers' budget pressures.