When Sandy Spurlock of the Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico, tried to confirm details of the institute’s 2003 library subscriptions with RoweCom, a Massachusetts-based subscription agent that provides magazines and journals to thousands of libraries worldwide, none of her telephone calls or e-mails was returned. A few days later, RoweCom went into bankruptcy. “I first learned in late December that RoweCom had cashed our check for $79 000 but had no intention of paying [publishers] for our subscriptions,” she says, “and we do not have the budget to pay for our [2003] subscriptions again. The implications for our research scientists are very serious.”
Between April and December 2002, RoweCom collected more than $65 million from libraries and institutions, including the National Institutes of Health Library ($2.4 million), Virginia Tech ($1.6 million), 3M ($1.3 million), and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory ($1.2 million). The company also collected significant sums...
