Carrollton Press, the vendor of REMARC, has introduced a new pricing plan to promote retrospective conversion by "clusters" of cooperating local and regional libraries. A cluster's first hit on a title in the REMARC data base will be charged at the regular rate of $.50, subsequent hits by libraries in the group will cost $.20 per hit. A group using the "cluster plan" does not require a minimum number of participants nor a minimum volume of transactions.
Carrollton Press also offers clusters cost savings in matching records against MARC tapes for $.15 per hit, compared with the individual library rate of $.20 per hit.
Recognizing that the negotiations to create multitype library clusters might take months or even years, Carrollton will negotiate REMARC contracts with individual libraries and permit these libraries to be absorbed into cluster contracts later. When the cluster is established each library will receive full credit for the first-time-use records it had acquired and future uses of these records by the members of the cluster will be charged at the reduced rate.
As further encouragement for libraries to undertake retrospective conversion using REMARC, Carrollton will loan libraries microcomputers, free of charge, to be used in keying abbreviated shelf list records onto floppy discs. The discs will be sent to Carrollton for matching against the REMARC data base.
[Contact: Carrollton Press, 1911 N. Fort Myer Drive, Arlington, VA 22209 (800) 368-3008.]
