Coursepack question - Xanedu

[elizabeth.winter@library.gatech.edu]

Hi--

I'm curious if any of you have had licensing inquiries from your 
college bookstore or, more directly, from XanEdu (a company many 
college bookstores employ to generate their coursepacks).

XanEdu contacted our library recently to find out if we could 
provide them with a list of electronic journals we license that 
allow for use in coursepacks.

I'm of two minds about this:

If it would help our students' coursepacks cost less (since 
presumably anything we already have coursepack rights to 
would--at least theoretically--reduce the permissions costs) then 
helping XanEdu might be worthwhile.

On the other hand, according to their web site, XanEdu offers a 
copyright compliance guarantee whereby they indemnify all 
customers against damages that arise as a result of infringement 
claims. If the library were to provide a list of journals with 
licensed coursepack rights, then could we possibly be opening 
ourselves up to liability issues (for example, if we interpreted 
a license more broadly than the publisher would, or if there was 
some miscommunication or misunderstanding between XanEdu and the 
library)?

Any thoughts or anecdotes from experience will be appreciated.

Many thanks,

Elizabeth L. Winter
Electronic Resources Coordinator
Collection Acquisitions & Management
Library and Information Center
Georgia Institute of Technology
email: elizabeth.winter@library.gatech.edu