RE: electronic journals CCC (fwd)

[Tom Williams <twilliam@bbl.usouthal.edu>]

Mike, lucky for us that Sue Medina has been steadfast in her insistance
that copyright law, including "Fair Use" and Contu guidelines be honored
in the NAAl contracts she's negotiated with various vendors.

Still, it's very important that library administrators, when negotiating
individually, insist on this same thing.  Publishers as a group would love
to see "Fair Use" and Contu guidelines go away and I've seen more than one
contract that tries to do that.  However, in most cases libraries can
negotiate back to fairness.  If we refuse to sign when ILL/Doc Del is
prohibited the vendors, at least the smart ones, generally come around.

Recently we've been back and forth with one major vendor who has actually
cut out a portion of Fair Use in the contract.  They refuse to allow us to
provide ILLs or articles to organizations which pay any fee.  There is
nothing in the copyright law nor the Contu guidelines that exclude cost
recovery.  The ironic part to this issue for that company is that their
refusal to honor fair use in this case will have little to no impact on
us.  Just about all of the titles we use regularly are already on our
shelves in print format so we'll still be able to provide ILLs to all of
our users - including those that get charged a cost recovery fee.  Print
journals are covered under fair use and Contu.  Online versions do not
always as we are required to sign separate contracts and the vendors do
their best to cut out certain of our rights in some cases.

However, we are negotiating a separate deal for this and hope to get this
issue resolved soon.  Some vendors don't seem to be able to distinguish
between cost recovery by a library and a commercial enterprise of an
information broker or information company that actually makes a profit on
this activity.

Negotiating these licenses is a tricky business and we have, on more than
one occasion, been told one thing verbally during negotiations and found
the opposite to be true when the written contract/license is finally
presented by the vendor.

There are land mines all over the place so we all have to keep our eyes
open when working out these online licenses.

Tom 

-- 
Thomas L. Williams, AHIP
Director, Biomedical Libraries and
 Media Production Services
University of South Alabama
College of Medicine
Mobile, Al 36688-0002
tel. (334)460-6885
fax. (334)460-7638
twilliam@bbl.usouthal.edu

On Wed, 25 Apr 2001 simmon11@msu.edu wrote:

> Sue Medina,
> 
> I commend you on your staunch support of US Copyright Law and the CONTU
> guidelines.  I'm curious, however, as to how many vendors/publishers of
> electronic journals have said, "Tough" and proceeded to deny access?
> 
> How many readers of this list have negotiated interlibrary loan rights in
> situations where it clearly states that ILL is not permitted from the
> electronic format?  Aside from dealing with aggregators I do not think
> that I would have the time to negotiate each and every contract.  By not
> doing so I guess I can be accused of allowing the status quo established
> by the publishers to be perpetuated.  The larger library with staff
> dedicated to more narrow duties may be able to negotiate special contracts
> but that is not the case in a small hospital library.
> 
> Mike Simmons
> Sparrow Health System Medical Library.
> _____________________________
> 
> smedina@ache.state.al.us said:
> 
> > I tell all vendors that NAAL will not waive rights under the U. S.
> > Copyright Law and the CONTU guidelines.
> > 
> > Sue O. Medina
> > Director
> > Network of Alabama Academic Libraries
> > P. O. Box 302000
> > Montgomery, AL  36130-2000
> > 334-242-2211
> > smedina@ache.state.al.us