The purpose of this article is to present comparative analysis of electronic information purchase in Korean university libraries relative to university libraries overseas. An overall comparison is made between libraries in Korea and in the U.S. in terms of their budget for electronic information. In addition, we compared the lists of web databases in service among three top-tier Korean universities and nine foreign universities(6 in the U.S., 1 in Canada, 1 in Australia, and 1 in China). The findings show that Korean universities tend to subscribe heavily to electronic journals packages than competing libraries overseas. However, in terms of providing subject-based reference databases, our libraries are far behind even mediocre institutions in these countries. We propose a number of recommendations to strengthen national licensing of electronic scholarly materials as a way to enhance access to electronic information through university libraries.