Surcharge Eliminated

For many years the Library has charged foreign users, as non-U.S. taxpayers, a surcharge that represents their proportional share of the costs of creating the databases. The surcharge has applied to users of the NLM databases whether access was direct to NLM from outside the U.S. or through MEDLARS licensees who provided products or services to users outside the U.S.

The Library recently reviewed its pricing policies in relation to the worldwide free Web access and the spirit of the U.S. Government's Administration's Global Information Infrastructure. That initiative encourages use of the Internet on a global basis. The Library has therefore decided that effective October 1, 1997 to discontinue charging users or licensees a foreign surcharge and urges all licensees to remove NLM's foreign surcharge from their pricing.

The ELHILL and TOXNET "SHOW COST" command displays will be changed to reflect this reduction in cost. Please watch the Online News and Broadcast for an announcement of when the change will be implemented online; it will likely take place sometime around October 1, 1997. Regardless of the date of the online announcement, all billed usage on non-Web based MEDLARS databases will exclude the surcharge portion in the actual invoices, effective, October 1,1997 forward.