Re: Authority to sign licenses: How much staff time?

[Fred Friend <ucylfjf@ucl.ac.uk>]

Steve Cramond's message brought a wry smile to my face, because like
others I have tended to think that the spread of model licences will save
us all a lot of time. I still think that is true but my wry smile was
caused by the fact that in the UK, even with a good model licence like the
PA/JISC Model Licence (which can be seen on the Liblicense Web site), we
are spending a lot of time adapting it for the particular situation of
NESLI, our national purchasing arrangement for electronic journals. The
pressure to change clauses in the model licence for this particular
situation is not coming from the academic community but from solicitors
representing interested parties. It still helps to have the framework of
the model licence in place but let nobody be under the illusion that the
existence of a model licence reduces the signing of a licence to a
formality. I cannot quantify the time that I and others in the UK are
spending on the NESLI Licence at the moment, but it is not negligible. As
has already been pointed out in another contribution to this list, moving
from reliance on copyright legislation to use of licences brings us into a
very different ball-game, and one which, for all the benefits of model
licences, does absorb a lot of time. 

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Frederick J.Friend,
Director Scholarly Communication,
c/o Graduate School,
Wilkins Building,
University College London,
Gower Street,
London WC1E 6BT,
England.
Telephone +44 171 380 7090
Fax           +44 171 380 7043
E-mail       ucylfjf@ucl.ac.uk   or    f.friend@ucl.ac.uk
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At 17:19 25/02/99 EST, you wrote:
>Apologies for creating a new thread from an existing and interesting one,
>but apropos of David Goodman's observation about rapid growth in the
>number and complexity of licences, we are currently reviewing our
>procedures for handling licences for electronic resources.
>
>We would be very interested to know how much staff time other libraries
>are devoting to the processes of: proactively developing or adapting
>standard licences as a negotiating strategy; reviewing existing licences
>and [re]negotiating new licences, developing management information
>systems to support this activity - and at what staffing level[s] this is
>being done.
>
>Any information would be greatly appreciated.
>
>Regards,
>    ___________________________________________________________________
>
>Steve Cramond 
>Electronic Information Resources Librarian
>University of Adelaide Library 
>
>eMail: scramond@library.adelaide.edu.au
>Phone: +61 8 8303 3629
>Fax: +61 8 8303 4369
>Postal Address: University of Adelaide Library, Adelaide SA 5005,
>Australia