Many academic libraries have thrown out their bound periodicals in favor of JSTOR. This is often because of space constraints and building costs, so it's ultimately up to school administrators who would rather the library just pay a subscription than maintain their own infrastructure.
On a somewhat related note, small college libraries are utterly abused by journal subscription costs, but it actually varies significantly by discipline. The American Chemical Society is notorious for strong arming libraries into paying unreasonably high sums, and some library directors think of them more as racketeering syndicate than a professional organizarion whose purpose is ostensibly to help chemists. The odd thing is that american physical society journals are much cheaper, and many are open access (which the APS pioneered), plus there is ArXiV where everyone posts their preprints publicly. Physics research is no less costly to publish than chem research, so the difference must boil down to culture and/or incentive structures with these organizations. If one group believes that knowledge should be given freely, and another believes knowledge is a product worth whatever people are willing to pay, they will come up with different systems.
My point is that there are alot of wrinkles to the problem, and many avenues of possible attack. Personally i think if we could get all disciplines on the same page as the APS, we would be more than halfway there.
Edit: it looks like the ACS has softened its position on posting preprints!
On a somewhat related note, small college libraries are utterly abused by journal subscription costs, but it actually varies significantly by discipline. The American Chemical Society is notorious for strong arming libraries into paying unreasonably high sums, and some library directors think of them more as racketeering syndicate than a professional organizarion whose purpose is ostensibly to help chemists. The odd thing is that american physical society journals are much cheaper, and many are open access (which the APS pioneered), plus there is ArXiV where everyone posts their preprints publicly. Physics research is no less costly to publish than chem research, so the difference must boil down to culture and/or incentive structures with these organizations. If one group believes that knowledge should be given freely, and another believes knowledge is a product worth whatever people are willing to pay, they will come up with different systems.
My point is that there are alot of wrinkles to the problem, and many avenues of possible attack. Personally i think if we could get all disciplines on the same page as the APS, we would be more than halfway there.
Edit: it looks like the ACS has softened its position on posting preprints!