Curt Reilly
Division Director
Circulation & Classified Advertising
American Medical Association
515 North State Street
Chicago, IL 60610

Dear Curt-

Thank you taking the Medical Library Association's call today in regard to the provision of
JAMA and the Archives Journals to medical libraries beyond January 31, 2003. JAMA and the
Archives journals are an important source of medical research and clinical information for
the medical community. The absence of these journals in the libraries' collections will hurt
the their ability to provide up-to-date and reliable medical information to the physicians,
allied health groups, and student health professionals they serve . We realize that the AMA
is a not-for-profit organization and the decision that you made to not provide the journals
past January was an economic one. Unfortunately, our libraries are in the same position-they
have already paid for the subscriptions and most cannot afford to pay again.

As we discussed, the ideal situation would be for the AMA to provide these journals to the
libraries until the situation with Faxon/RoweCom is resolved and the monies distributed to the
publishers. You have indicated that the AMA cannot afford to do this without some assurances
that the association will be reimbursed. As an alternative, we propose that the AMA provide
electronic access to JAMA and the Archives journals to its library subscribers free-of-charge
until April 30, 2003. Although not all of our libraries may be able to access on-line
publications, we hope that this will help the majority continue to provide their users with
uninterrupted access to the AMA journals. 

Thank you and your board for considering our request. We look forward to working with you to
resolve this issue.

Sincerely,

Linda A. Watson, AHIP                   		Carla J. Funk, CAE
President, Medical Library Association          Executive Director, Medical Library Association