RE: Ask a Live Librarian Online

["Mcsean, Tony (ELS)" <T.Mcsean@elsevier.com>]

Tom Williams summarises the position pretty well.  

Elsevier's licences for ScienceDirect allow for use within the defined
community for which it has been negotiated, and for walk-in use within the
library by anyone to whom the library gives access.  The use of chat
software for direct provision of Science Direct articles is fine when the
recipient is a student, member of staff or other defined member of the
community.  With non-affiliated enquirers supplying an article in this way
is in essence indistinguishable from supplying an interlibrary loan and is
not covered by the standard licence.  The reference librarian should
provide the citation and then the article should be acquired using ILL
procedures in the normal way.

Tony

Tony McSe�n
Director of Library Relations
Elsevier
+44 7795 960516
+44 1865 843630

-----Original Message-----
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Tom Williams
Sent: 29 March 2005 01:02
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Re: Ask a Live Librarian Online

We've been offering "live chat" for a couple of years now.  The vast
majority of our chat users are affiliated students and faculty, most
especially distance education students.  When they request a specific
article that we subscribe to electronically, we usually link them
automatically to the article and let them print/download or whatever.  
However, there is nothing to stop us, based on my interpretation of our
license, to simply send them the article directly to their email.  Again,
these are our own students, faculty, etc. who are "authorized users" as
defined by our licenses.

It is different when someone logs in to chat and is not affiliated with
our institution and thus not an authorized user.  We offer them the same
Reference and other services available on chat but they are unable to link
directly to the article nor can we send them the article by email.  We
can, however, print the article and send/fax it to them or scan it for
Ariel transmission.

However, someone made the point that these "unaffiliated" users coming in
to the Online Chat line should be considered "walk in users."  I'm not
sure if our publishers/vendors would buy into this but it's a nice
thought.  Given that we are all becoming very much libraries without
walls, can a case be made for this?  Perhaps this is a topic for further
discussion.

Tom Williams

Mary Seligman wrote:

>Good morning:
>
>I'm assuming that to remotely access the electronic resources, a patron
>would need to have a user name and password issued by the university. As
>long as that criterion is met, there would be no violation of the license
>agreement.  A walk-in patron would not have remote access authorization.
>If I understand this situation, the 'walk-in' user would be viewing
>documents via a librarian.  I think it's likely a violation of the intent
>of the license to limit off campus use to authorized users.
>
>Mary Seligman
>Acquisitions Librarian
>Adelphi University
>Garden City, NY 11530