Negotiating Licences for Digital Resources

Citation

Malinconico, S.M. (2006), "Negotiating Licences for Digital Resources", Program: electronic library and information systems, Vol. 40 No. 4, pp. 400-401. https://doi.org/10.1108/00330330610708015

The addition of digital sources to library collections has changed the definition of those collections. This definition is no longer restricted by a library's physical walls; nor is it limited to materials that the library physically owns. It may include resources that the library has licensed and resources that have been licensed on behalf of the library by consortia to which it belongs or by local or regional governments. Digital collections managed by academic libraries may include a variety of resources that have not been formally published, e.g. collections of digital databases or other digital products developed as a result of faculty or student research; faculty or class web sites; electronic course materials; digital objects developed to support teaching; streamed media recordings of lectures, conferences and other campus activities; electronic, university administrative records; etc. That is, it is “content without a container”.

Continued access to these materials is not a consequence of possession, but is instead determined by a complex of contractual agreements and institutional policies. Negotiating, and managing these agreements has become an increasingly important element of managing library collections.

Because of the increasing variety of new media, the proliferation of sources in all formats, and their rapidly increasing costs, librarians are finding that relative to the present, the past seems like a time of ample resources – though, in fact, it never was. Materials budgets have failed to keep up with the many new demands placed on them, and the resulting “service deficit” continues to grow. This is hardly a new phenomenon. Libraries have been attempting to deal with economic stringencies for decades by moving from building local collections to shared collection development programmes (Jakubs, 1999). The success of these efforts has been largely limited, as sharing and moving physical objects have presented serious challenges. However, an increasing utilisation of digital resources has led to a renewed interest in shared collection development. Consequently, collection development, or collection management, frequently involves reaching agreements between multiple parties. Collection managers must negotiate with the suppliers of digital resources as well as their own colleagues and peers, and even their user communities.

The special characteristics of digital resources impose requirements on collection managers to help ensure that their institutions comply with applicable intellectual property rights regulations. On the other hand, collection managers also need to help ensure that their users' rights are protected, and that their information needs are satisfied to the greatest extent possible. This requirement constitutes a substantial expansion of the responsibilities of collection managers. The practice of acquiring traditional, physical, information resources by purchase is being replaced with obtaining licences to access electronic resources. When libraries purchase books or periodicals, they can make them available to whomever they choose on whatever terms they choose; and they can permit reasonable amounts of reproduction – within the constraints of copyright law. Licences, on the other hand, may restrict the legal rights of the library and its users. Thus, collection managers find themselves entering a strange, new world in which they must not only discover and provide access to quality information resources; they must also ensure that the proper technological infrastructure is in place to utilise those resources, ensure compliance with applicable laws; and they must also negotiate the terms of that access. Such negotiations are difficult enough. They become even more challenging when access rights must be negotiated for a library's own diverse user groups, as well as those of its consortium partners. Negotiations might include reaching agreement on many questions, including:

1. 1.

   How many simultaneous users may access a digital resource?

2. 2.

   How will authorised users be authenticated?:

   • •

     Only from workstations in the library or university campus?

   • •

     Will authorised off‐campus users have access?

3. 3.

   Under what conditions are users permitted to copy portions of text?

4. 4.

   Under what conditions will they be permitted to download accessible material?

5. 5.

   Will users of a library's consortium partners be granted access?

What are the library's obligations to enforce protection of intellectual property rights?

Negotiating licences has become a particularly important responsibility of collection managers, as the terms of those licences have a profound influence on the convenience, and quality of the service libraries are able to deliver. This matter is sufficiently important that six US library associations representing a membership of libraries of all sizes (the American Association of Law Libraries, the American Library Association, the Association of Academic Health Sciences Libraries, the Association of Research Libraries, the Medical Library Association, and the Special Libraries Association) have developed Principles for licensing electronic resources (AALL, 1997).

Thus, Fiona Durrant's Negotiating licences for digital resources, should be a particularly timely and useful addition to the professional collections of many libraries. For most librarians, whose background is in the arts and humanities, the idea of negotiating agreements with representatives of electronic publishers is without doubt intimidating. However, by describing and explaining each of the several steps in the process, and the terminology employed, Durrant has reduced a large, potentially anxiety provoking activity into a number of smaller, manageable tasks that are notably less intimidating. Considerable attention is given to the crucial preparation and information‐gathering steps – activities in which librarians excel. This helps to lay the groundwork for the more formal, and perhaps less familiar, activities involved in the actual negotiation.

Much practical advice is offered concerning the scheduling and conduct of meetings, and useful suggestions for rescuing them from impasse. Durrant sprinkles her discussion of the negotiation process with various suggestions for responding to typical situations that might arise and that might derail progress toward an agreement. For example, when the library and vendor seem far apart on an issue such as pricing or terms of access, she recommends that the library representative ask the publisher's representative to discuss the principles or policies upon which the offer at hand is based and how these principles relate to the present situation. By moving to a higher level of abstraction, both sides gain the ability to explore alternatives that might be mutually satisfactory.

Although this review is biased toward the needs of libraries and their representatives, it must be noted that Negotiating Licences for Digital Resources is also intended for, and pays considerable attention to, the negotiating process from the perspective of electronic publishers. It is worth noting that not all electronic publishers are major, well‐established enterprises, some are fledgling start‐ups for whom tenders, contracts and negotiation is also a new and unfamiliar landscape.

Though few librarians will actually find themselves engaged in the face‐to‐face drama of negotiation, this book is still of general usefulness, for as Durrant notes much of a library's staff will of necessity be involved in preparation for, and support of, those negotiations. Thus, a thorough understanding of the process will allow them to make a greater contribution to a successful negotiation.

Durrant frequently refers to another excellent work (Fisher and Ury, 1991) I highly recommend this as collateral reading, as it describes the theory and practice of negotiation – from simple transactions involving two individuals to the drafting of international treaties – in a very clear and readable manner. Echoing Fisher and Ury, Durrant writes:

Negotiation is very frequently worth the time and effort. It is about moving toward a mutually satisfactory outcome. Negotiation is about thinking how to achieve goals while respecting that others have their goals too (Fisher and Ury, 1997, p. 129).

This very simple idea of negotiation as an attempt to seek a mutually satisfactory agreement instead of as an adversarial encounter will help novice, and experienced, librarians alike overcome the fear that most of us have of negotiation. Once we dispel the notion that negotiation is a zero‐sum game, i.e. one side gains something only if the other loses something, we also dispel the fear of losing, and the fear of injuring our relations with the other party to the negotiation.