ChoiceReviews.online

[Carol Cubberley <Carol.Cubberley@usm.edu>]

Dear Steven,

I have just received the license agreement for ChoiceReviews.online, and I
must say that I am shocked by it. I certainly will not be signing it.

There was no indication in the ad I saw that use would be limited to 20
individuals. That is not what I call a subscription, and I think it is
absolutely outrageous.

Furthermore, I find other parts of the license agreement surprising. I
would think that our own organization would be cognizant of the
difficulties publishers' licenses create for libraries and would be
following the discussions going on in the profession concerning them. Yet
ALA-ACRL is going beyond what many commercial publishers are doing to make
a license unacceptable.

First, you have an indemnification clause. Most state universities are
prohibited from entering into an agreement that includes such a clause. We
are in Mississippi.

You also are attempting to make the licensee responsible for the behavior
of other users.

Besides limiting us to 20 users, you are giving us a workload of
maintaining an updated list, and cooperating with you in the implementation
of additional security procedures as they are developed -- not even knowing
what they may be, if they are onerous or unreasonable.

How on earth did you miss that other old favorite of publishers that we
constantly have to negotiate out -- the one that states that any litigation
will take place in the publishers' home state?


Carol Cubberley
Director of Technical Services/Professor
University Libraries
University of Southern Mississippi
Box 5053
Hattiesburg MS 39406
(601) 266-4248
fax (601) 266-6033