No, this is NOT an April Fool’s joke!

OCLC has announced that there will be no price increases for “OCLC cataloging  and metadata services, resource sharing and access, and digital and preservation services” for the 2009-2010 fiscal year (July 1 – June 30). On February 9, the OCLC Board of Trustees unanimously adopted OCLC management’s recommendation to keep prices at current levels.

Said OCLC President, Jay Jordan, in a column published in the February issue of Next Space: The OCLC Newsletter:

The Board of Trustees and OCLC management are acutely aware that the economic news coming from member libraries around the world is bleak–budget cuts, reduced hours, slashed programs.

Libraries are again being confronted to do more with less. In that vein, OCLC’s chartered objective of reducing the rate of rise of library costs is more compelling than ever.

Therefore, I am pleased to report that on February 9, the OCLC Board of Trustees unanimously adopted OCLC management’s recommendation to keep prices at current levels in 2009-2010.

Read the entire column here: http://www.oclc.org/us/en/nextspace/011/letter.htm.

For libraries that are now part of Washington Group Services, this means no price increase as well, since the Group Services contract with OCLC includes a clause mandating that price increases under Group Services will not exceed those imposed on the OCLC membership at large.

For more information on Washington Group Services, visit the project web site, or contact Will Stuivenga at [email protected] 360.704.5217 or toll free 866.538.4996.