By James Speed Hensinger

Britannica has restructured its pricing to allow schools, public libraries and special libraries to join BCR's consortium purchase of Britannica Online, the electronic version of the Encyclopædia Britannica. That means all libraries now can take advantage of the discount price, formerly available only to academic libraries.

Because we now have 56 academic libraries with more than 200,000 FTEs (full-time student equivalent enrollment) signed up for the BCR consortia, these libraries are paying only 53 cents per FTE annually to access Britannica Online. That's about half what the average institution would pay under an individual subscription. And the more libraries that sign up, the lower the future price will be.

The current group subscription year expires January 31, 1998. New members will be pro-rated so that all participating libraries will renew their subscriptions effective February 1, 1998.

Libraries will pay based on their full-time student equivalent enrollment:

• Higher education libraries pay 100 percent of their fall FTEs.

• Community colleges pay 75 percent of their fall FTEs.

• Secondary (grades 6/7-12) education libraries pay 100 percent of their FTEs.

• Elementary (grades K-5/6) school libraries pay 50 percent of their FTEs.

• Public libraries pay based on 5 percent of the total population each serves.

• Business and government employees pay based on 100 percent of their employees who have Internet access.

A public library's population served is based on the ALA publication Statistical Report ‘96: Public Library Data Service. Libraries not listed in the Report may use their best estimate.

Britannica Online, available on the World Wide Web, is accessed by a web browser such as Netscape or Mosaic. It is an award-winning, multimedia product with more than 400,000 references compiled, edited and hypertext-linked to text articles for easy navigation. In addition, it has more than 10,000 links to images and tables and incorporates Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (10th Ed.). Searches can be entered in plain English or by entering key words and Boolean operators. Libraries can obtain a free trial at . For more information, please contact BCR's Jim Hensinger at jhensing@bcr.org. To request an order form, contact Bridget Pence at bpence@bcr.org or at (800) 397-1552.