Re: Developing impossible situation, Re: Authority to sign licenses

[Donna Packer <d3737@cc.wwu.edu>]

I am curious to know whether libraries find publishers notify them of
changes in licensing terms since the contract for a particular product was
signed. At least one major vendor in my experience simply shrugged when I
pointed out that the terms on the contract we signed were no longer
applicable, and they had sent us no notice of new (and, for us, more
favorable) options.

This led me to generalize that publishers have started this licensing
business, with its expensive administrative overhead for both sides, but
don't want to go to the expense of following through with change
notifications for individual products and individual customers. Perhaps
I'm wrong, and this was an isolated instance.

				- Donna Packer

On Wed, 24 Feb 1999, David Goodman wrote:

> We have all encountered unexpectedly changed terms in new licenses. But as
> universities now each have several hundred online products at least, which
> will probably increase to several thousand in a year or so, how is this to
> be accomplished? It is as if we had to separately negotiate, and annually
> review and potentially renegotiate, licenses for all of our paper serial
> titles, and separately negotiate licenses for each of the monographs as
> well.
> 
> The acceptance of the concept of copyright law and permitted free use has
> in general made this unnecessary for paper -- though this did take several
> centuries.
> 
> David Goodman
> Biology Librarian, Princeton University Library
> dgoodman@princeton.edu         http://www.princeton.edu/~biolib/
> phone: 609-258-3235            fax: 609-258-2627