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Re: Librarians and their institutional attorneys



Hi. A response to Ann Okerson's question:

At my institution, we usually draw on the expertise of university counsel when something new and significant, at an institutional level, appears in a license. For example, some product licenses from the United States now feature clauses that state that licensed material can not be sent to authorised users in countries under interdiction by the American government. As a library in another country, this could cause us serious difficulties; we have users and programs in "embargoed" nations and to deny these people access to the content would go against the basic tenets of a publicly-funded institution (equal access, all that). Needless to say, when these clauses first appeared (approximately a year ago), we sent these to the university lawyers for their opinion.

Hope this helps.

Andrew

--
Andrew Waller
Serials Librarian
Collections Services
University of Calgary Library

waller@ucalgary.ca
(403) 220-8133 voice
(403) 284-2109 fax