When Swets filed for bankruptcy in 2014, the 113-year old company clearly illustrated the difficulties faced by traditional intermediaries in a rapidly changing information ecosystem. The web has revolutionised many-to-many transactions and all intermediaries - whether library, publisher or subscription agent - have needed to transform the nature of their services. Failure to transform successfully will inevitably lead to the failure of individual companies, but the failure of such a high-profile subscription agent raised fundamental questions about the future of the industry itself: How could this have happened? How can it be stopped from happening again? And, most importantly, is there a long-term future for subscription agents?
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