RE: electronic journals CCC

[Janet Croft <jbcroft@ou.edu>]

Cost recovery isn't for the cost of the subscription at all! It's for
administrative costs like photocopying, shipping materials, and shipping
fees.  It ususally doesn't even include staff time! The subscription cost
is an expected part of the budget, and libraries don't try to recover it.

Janet Brennan Croft
Head of Access Services
University of Oklahoma
Bizzell Library NW106
Norman OK 73019
405-325-1918
fax 405-325-7618
jbcroft@ou.edu

-----Original Message-----
From: S.MATTERN@KARGER.CH [mailto:S.MATTERN@KARGER.CH]
Sent: Monday, April 30, 2001 3:17 PM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Re: electronic journals CCC

>Some vendors don't seem to be able to distinguish
>between cost recovery by a library and a commercial enterprise of an
>information broker or information company that actually makes a profit on
>this activity.

I guess I must be one of them.

Could you please clarify what *cost recovery* means in this case? Once you
recover the cost of the subscription, do you stop charging an ILL fee or
does the cost recovery have to do with the administrative costs associated
with ILL?

Thanks for your input.
________________________________
Sharon Mattern Buettiker,
Internet Services Coordinator
S. Karger AG
BioMedical Publishers since 1890
Allschwilerstrasse 10
CH-4009 Basel
Switzerland

E-mail: s.mattern@karger.ch
______

Mike, lucky for us that Sue Medina has been steadfast in her insistance
that copyright law, including "Fair Use" and Contu guidelines be honored
in the NAAl contracts she's negotiated with various vendors.

Still, it's very important that library administrators, when negotiating
individually, insist on this same thing.  Publishers as a group would love
to see "Fair Use" and Contu guidelines go away and I've seen more than one
contract that tries to do that.  However, in most cases libraries can
negotiate back to fairness.  If we refuse to sign when ILL/Doc Del is
prohibited the vendors, at least the smart ones, generally come around.

Recently we've been back and forth with one major vendor who has actually
cut out a portion of Fair Use in the contract.  They refuse to allow us to
provide ILLs or articles to organizations which pay any fee.  There is
nothing in the copyright law nor the Contu guidelines that exclude cost
recovery.  The ironic part to this issue for that company is that their
refusal to honor fair use in this case will have little to no impact on
us.  Just about all of the titles we use regularly are already on our
shelves in print format so we'll still be able to provide ILLs to all of
our users - including those that get charged a cost recovery fee.  Print
journals are covered under fair use and Contu.  Online versions do not
always as we are required to sign separate contracts and the vendors do
their best to cut out certain of our rights in some cases.

However, we are negotiating a separate deal for this and hope to get this
issue resolved soon.  Some vendors don't seem to be able to distinguish
between cost recovery by a library and a commercial enterprise of an
information broker or information company that actually makes a profit on
this activity.

Negotiating these licenses is a tricky business and we have, on more than
one occasion, been told one thing verbally during negotiations and found
the opposite to be true when the written contract/license is finally
presented by the vendor.

There are land mines all over the place so we all have to keep our eyes
open when working out these online licenses.

Tom

--
Thomas L. Williams, AHIP
Director, Biomedical Libraries and
 Media Production Services
University of South Alabama
College of Medicine
Mobile, Al 36688-0002
tel. (334)460-6885
fax. (334)460-7638
twilliam@bbl.usouthal.edu=20