Results of informal survey "Who signs your license agreements/" Jack Fitzpatrick 01 Apr 2005 14:20 UTC
Thanks to all who responded to my informal survey question yesterday regarding who negotiates and signs your electronic resource license agreements. As is often the case with these types of surveys, the answers indicated that the question could perhaps have been phrased somewhat differently. My original query was: "Are your license agreements negotiated and signed by library personnel or is this handled by your university attorneys or university-retained law offices?" It was also pointed out to me that the mailing list liblicense-l would perhaps have been a better forum for this survey. I am not a subscriber to that list, but a search of their archives did turn up a similar survey done there in the past. I refer to the survey "How does your library handle electronic serials? A General Survey," by David Kisly & Mark Jordan. Apparently the results of that survey were revealed at the conference: Access 2001, September 27-29 Winnipeg Manitoba, Crafting the Information Edge. Unfortunately the link to the document for this presentation on the conference web site is broken (does anyone have a copy of those results?) If readers of this list know of any other previous surveys done along these lines, either on mailing lists or in the professional literature, I'd be glad to hear about it. Now on to the survey results: For many libraries, negotiations are handled by the library, but the license is signed elsewhere on campus; in some cases the procurement/purchasing offices sign the agreement. Often the campus legal office reviews each license before sending it on to be signed. To come up with a summary, I divided the responses into two categories: 1) libraries which are not required to consult with other campus units (i.e.; everything is handled in-house) and 2) libraries who have to send the agreement elsewhere on campus to be negotiated, reviewed and/or signed by third parties. Of those Category 2 libraries, I also counted the number who were required to have the license reviewed by their campus attorneys' offices. Of the 29 replies I received the results are: Category 1 - licenses can be handled in-house: 17 Category 2 - must consult/route to other unit(s) on campus before being finalized: 11 Of the 11 Category 2 replies, four of those indicated that legal council reviewed the licenses as part of the process. Finally one library indicated that any licenses for products with a cost of less than $25,000 were handled in-house; anything greater than that had to be signed also by their Purchasing Office. Again, thanks to all who responded. Jack D. Fitzpatrick Cataloging Dept. Auburn University Libraries fitzpjd@auburn.edu 334-844-0777