Pricing databases, and service contracts

**G*@aol.com**

A big corporate provider of bibliographic databases has expressed interest in 
acquiring my database Garden Literature and signing a long-term service 
contract with me to assist in future development of the database.  It would 
like to expand coverage, increase backfile and provide full text linking for 
a new "Garden Literature Online".  It may also want to fund development of 
related publications.

Garden Literature is an annotated author and subject index to articles about 
plants and gardens, plus book review citations by author and title. The 
database, begun in 1992, contains nearly 38,000 annotated citations to 
articles, plus several hundreds of thousands assigned "access" points such as 
author, illustrator, photographer, name of garden, design firm, scientific 
and common plant name, and myriad topics, both broad (such as Native plants 
for cultivation, Water gardens, Tools and equipment, and Plant diseases) and 
narrow (such as Chippers and shredders, Island beds, Integrated weed 
management, and Mosquitoes). Article records are added at a rate of about 
1500 per year. I am the sole employee. Our first face-to-face meeting is this 
coming Thursday.

I've been out of the corporate loop for over a decade. Can anyone help me:

1) to assign a dollar value to the database
2) to clarify roles and protect my interests
3) to identify pitfalls to avoid, where I might go for help, other comments

Many thanks.

Sally Williams
Editor and publisher
Garden Literature Press
398 Columbus Ave, No 181
Boston MA 02116
tel/fax 617 424 1784
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