RE: Negotiate or sign? (Was: "Confused")

[J.Tousley@iaea.org]

Agreeing wholeheartedly with Eleanor's summary, I also wish to add that
from our organization's point-of-view, we contract with companies to buy
their "goods and services".  They do not contract with us to sell us
something. Therefore, the contracts that we sign in the end represent us
as setting the terms of the relationship.  While this puts a bit of a
burden on legal staff, in the end we know what it is that we are getting
and the terms of the relationship.  Certainly the wording for the
"content" portion and of course the terms of pricing that we agree to come
from the vendor or supplier.  But it is our contract and we request them
to review our contract and to accept or reject it.  We have encountered
one vendor that would simply not accept the terms and that was the end of
negotiations.  But otherwise, we have a good batting record and we have no
qualms about the terms of our contracts.

Regards,
Joanna Tousley-Escalante
*	Head, TSU
*	VIC Library - IAEA
*	Vienna, Austria
*	j.tousley@iaea.org
*	431 2600-22624

> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Date: Tue, 16 May 2000 21:00:26 -0500 (EST)
> From: ELEANOR COOK <COOKEI@conrad.appstate.edu>
> Subject: Negotiate or sign? Was: 'Confused'
> To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
> 
> There seem to be two extreme camps these days on licenses:
>   1. Sign the damn thing: no one is going to sue you
>   2. Agonize over all clauses and get it right, even if it takes a year
> 
> Where I am, we've done it both ways. We are currently coming out of a fog
> from camp #2. How we benefitted from doing the agonizing is that our
> attorney's office now feels much more confident, having done the research,
> having talked to other universities in our state system and also having
> talked to the State Attorney General's office. If you sign licenses
> without knowing what you're doing, you're asking for trouble.  You should
> not allow companies to put conditions in licenses that you cannot
> realistically meet under any circumstances. I am sure there are libraries
> out there who would sign licenses saying they would whistle Dixie in the
> nude every other Friday; i.e., not having read the license, they have
> agreed to ridiculous conditions. Don't do that - would you do that if you
> were going to buy a house or a car? - well, don't answer that, I am sure
> there are plenty of people out there who have signed their lives away with
> banks and mortgage companies too.
> 
> The point is, it's the taxpayers money or the shareholders' or whoever you
> work for. It's your responsibility to represent your institution as best
> you can. Also, we have determined that serials and acquisitions and
> collection development librarians should not be signing any of these
> licenses - the director or a higher officer in the institution should be
> signee. We do the leg work, they do the signing - they get paid the big
> bucks for that liability, not us.  They trust us to research the license
> with legal counsel first.
> 
> We *must* continue to work with publishers and vendors to SIMPLIFY these
> licenses as much as possible. A number of publishers have done so and I
> encourage the others to follow.
> 
> Thanks,
> Eleanor Cook
> *********************************************************************
> Eleanor I. Cook                                  828-262-2786 (wrk)    
> Interim Coordinator, Materials Processing        828-262-2773 (fax)  
> & Serials Specialist               
> Belk Library, PO Box 32026                                         
> Appalachian State University                             
> Boone, NC 28608-2026                             cookei@appstate.edu  
> *********************************************************************
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