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Re: EJournal Aggregation

Question for Paul and others:

How aggregated is aggregation when, as Paul Gherman writes of OCLC's
ejournal service:

>The publishers establishes whatever license agreement they care to with
>libraries. [and the aggregator offers the actual access]

The is the model that others are proposing as well.  Now, on the one hand,
this pleases me because I emphatically feel we NOT have arrived at the
point where ejournal (or other e-content) licenses are standard and
acceptable enough for libraries to allow an intermediary/aggregator to
consolidate the licensing part of the work for us. Also, these aggregators
are licensees themselves and are not necessarily in the best position to
represent customers' interests vis a vis license language.  We (libraries)
can generally get better use terms for ourselves directly than by taking
what an aggregator offers. 

BUT -- surely one of the largest parts of the effort related to accessing
econtent is the *licensing* negotiations.  The bind is that aggregators
currently cannot help us with this matter.  Does anyone see any way out of
this, or are we (as I believe) in a position of negotiating singly and
directly an increasing number of licenses each month, while waiting a few
years for some acceptable practices and language to emerge?  At that
point, the aggregators could add licenses to their arsenal of services for
libraries.  The objective of this list and the Liblicense project overall
is to hasten that day; are there other ways?

Ann Okerson
Co-Moderator
Liblicense-l
Ann.Okerson@yale.edu

References:



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