Electronic journals redux

When academic journals in electronic format were introduced, librarians eagerly anticipated a drop in wildly escalating journal prices. After all, publishers incur no paper costs, no mailing costs, and no significant additional production costs in distributing an electronic equivalent to their paper journals. However, to date, the crisis in rising serial costs has not been alleviated by the availability of electronic journals. Seven years after his first column discussing libraries' struggles with serial prices, the author revisits the topic of electronic journals and summarizes what we have learned about using journals in this format.