Re: A question of licences and Alumni members

["John Cox" <John.E.Cox@btinternet.com>]

Ann Okerson raises some interesting issues.  The following comments can
only reflect my personal view, the context of which is to license all uses
the licensee institution needs in order to undertake its teaching and
research properly while keeping the paperwork to a minimum:

1.  It does not make sense to go for a separate license.  Access to alumni
is acceptable to many publishers provided that it is restricted to access
made on terminals in the library itself or on courses/events run by the
institution.  All such use is restricted to personal study and research.

2.  If the course is run by the institution, individuals are covered by
the usual license definition of Authorised Users including "faculty, staff
and students"; they qualify as students.  But the course must be run by
the institution, not by a separate organisation like an alumni association
for which the licensee institution is not responsible.

I have a more general comment.  Where is this pressing demand for alumnus
access coming from?  In my experience and that of my friends, we all move
on quickly from an important three or four year experience to the rest of
our lives.  My fellow alumni do get together for reunions etc, but these
are mainly social.  University was a milestone in our lives, but only
that.  Of those who have gone into academic life, they will use the
libraries available to them at their present universities.  The rest of us
move into other modes of life.  Is this demand merely a "nice to do"
thought by librarians?  Show publishers the real demand, and we will
respond.

But it sounds like tilting at windmills!

John Cox
John.E.Cox@btinternet.com
www.licensingmodels.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Ann Okerson <ann.okerson@yale.edu>
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Date: 16 July 2000 19:38
Subject: Re: A question of licences and Alumni members

>John and others:  I understand the traditional arguments against including
>alumni in licenses.  And I have two real-life questions:
>
>1.  Under what conditions would electronic information providers include
>alumni access to a given information resources?  Under a different license
>altogether? Under the same license but more money? With certain
>limitations?
>
>2.  What if one's alumni association creates short continuing education
>courses for those same alumni, at their request (they want to keep in
>touch with former professors and learn from them, etc.).
>
>Assume here that the courses are offered for free or at price that aims
>to recover costs (not make money), and the individuals in the courses
>can be identified and access given to enrollees only, with the rest of
>alumni excluded.
>
>Would such a scenario be acceptable?  Would it require a whole separate
>license negotiation (which, for, say, a 4 or 6-week course with a limited
>enrollment of, say, 50 or fewer wouldn't likely be cost effective)? Would
>inclusion of such alumni be acceptable under fairly common license
>language that permits faculty, staff, and student access wherever they may
>be located?  I would appreciate a discussion of such limited
>alumni-as-student coverage and its relationship to all-alumni-all-the-time
>kinds of licenses.
>
>Thank you, Ann Okerson
>Yale University Library