Re: manifest assent

[Ann Okerson <ann.okerson@yale.edu>]

One is almost tempted to re-name the subject header of this discussion
thread "Where's Waldo?"  I took Kimberly's list below and went to each of
the three publishers' "terms and conditions" or "license." Having read the
license (no comments here on the contents of any of the three licenses, as
that's not the point here), I then stripped back the URL to the company's
basic URL, pretending that I was visiting it as a librarian who was
interested in licensing the title and finding the terms and conditions
from the home page.

This was a task!  I've annotated each of the three examples (all major
publishers) describing briefly my search for Waldo.  My overarching
comment is: these were hard to find and had I not known the licenses were
there I might never have found them.  I.e., you need help for this.  Such
relative obscurity contributes to the problem Kimberly identifies. At the
least perhaps we could ask publishers to make sure that their web sites
offer a clear and easy path to terms and conditions for gaining access to
their e-titles?  In no case did I find a suitable search capability on the
home page, so there was no quick way to find the needed information.  
Where searching was possible, it was for specific journal titles.  The
point here is:  we are speaking of legal contracts.  They should be easy
for the reader or purchaser to find.

See comments below marked with ##.

> Examples I can do.  The ones below are ones that I can find scrambling in
> my files.  So some may be perfectly acceptable and others may have
> language that people would want to modify.  No distinctions made here.
> 
> http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/terms.html

## Go to the T&F home page at:  http://www.tandf.co.uk/
o Click on the link "About Taylor & Francis" 
o Doesn't get you far, so try the link "Our Publishing Program"; no, so
o Click on "Journals" -- but no licensing information, so
o Try "Ordering" -- nope that's not the one, so
o Try "Online Journals" -- aha! at the bottom of a list of links and
	at the top of that page, one gets to terms and conditions!

> http://www.sagepub.com/shopping/journal_online.asp#Licence

## Go to the Sage home page at:  http://www.sagepub.com/
o None of the links on the left side of the home page seem right, so
o Try "Journals" listing, which is ... only a journals listing
o Try "Advanced search" -- nope, doesn't help
o Try "Customer Service Info" but that's just an address & phone no.
o Try "Permissions" -- nope, not there.
o Ah, here's a link called "Advertising Info. Journals On-Line Survey"
  Turned out that that's three separate links; not divided by a line
	as the other Sage main links on home page, so you need to
o Try "Journals On-Line" and there at last is a link to Terms and
	Conditions!

> http://www.blackwellpublishers.co.uk/static/online.htm#Terms

## Go to the basic URL:  http://www.blackwellpublishers.co.uk/
o Discover that the "Search" feature is only for specific titles, so 
o Try "Ordering" -- nope
o Try "Electronic Products" -- looks promising?  then
o Scoll down to "Electronic Journals of Print Versions" -- then
o Try clicking on the link called "Online Journals Information"
o AHA!  A link to "Terms and conditions!"  You are there.

There must be ways to improve on the situation and if these three
responsible publishers, with very fine home pages are typical, then
many others will give up their licenses no more easily.  The LIBLICENSE
web site has a link to publisher licenses, but under the assumption
that these were easily found, we stopped updating these links a year
or more ago.  Perhaps it's time to start again.

Ann Okerson/Yale University
Ann.Okerson@yale.edu

> -------------------------------------------------------------
> Kimberly Parker
> Electronic Publishing and Collections Librarian
> Yale University Library
> 130 Wall Street              Voice (203) 432-0067
> P.O. Box 208240              Fax (203) 432-7231
> New Haven, CT  06520-8240    mailto:kimberly.parker@yale.edu
> -------------------------------------------------------------