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

[Steve Cramond <scramond@library.adelaide.edu.au>]

At 10:57 PM 3/1/99 EST, Fred Friend wrote:
>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......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. 

Fred's point about using model licences - such as NESLI's - is a good one,
and I didn't mean to suggest that individual libraries or consortia should
spend a lot of time re-inventing that particular wheel.

I am still interested, though, in discovering how much time individual
libraries are spending on the process of negotiating, or renegotiating,
with publishers/vendors the acceptance of the terms of a model licence.

Even in the UK, with the NESLI licence, I assume that individual libraries
are still going to be left to pursue negotiation with publishers not now
involved with NESLI or CHEST?

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