9 Licensing Electronic Resources
Sunshine Carter and Ruth Dukelow
LIBLICENSE Model License Agreement
NISO’s SERU: Shared Electronic Resource Understanding
LIBLICENSE Model License Agreement
LIBLICENSE: Licensing Digital Contents – a Resource for Librarians, liblicense.crl.edu
LIBLICENSE Model License Agreement (LIBLICENSE) with Commentary, LIBLICENSE.crl.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/modellicensenew2014revmay2015.pdf
Commentary
Introduction
A license is one form of a contract. This chapter provides an overview of general licensing practices between libraries and content providers of electronic resources, commonly-used provisions in those licenses, with sample clauses from the LIBLICENSE Model License Agreement (LIBLICENSE), followed by a brief discussion of NISO’s SERU: A Shared Electronic Resource Understanding. For broader coverage of basic contract law and different forms of contracts, please refer to the Contract Law Basics chapter in this textbook at mlpp.pressbooks.pub/librarylaw/chapter/contract-law-basics/.
The information contained in this chapter is not legal advice and is provided solely to introduce library, archives, and information science students to legal concepts in licensing.
Licensing Practices
Licenses for e-resources, negotiated with content providers, spell out what materials the library is permitted to use, how the materials may be used and by whom, the cost, the duration of the license and how it may be terminated or renewed, and what rights, if any, the library has to use the materials after the license has been terminated.
It is good practice to read the license with a checklist of standard license provisions that you or your institution require. Read the license to find each provision and analyze the provision based on your library’s needs and what the salesperson has promised you. If your library or archives is part of an institution with its own counsel, let your counsel know of any problematic provisions.
You, or your counsel, would then ask the vendor for changes to any provisions that do not meet your library’s needs (use Microsoft Word’s “Track Changes” feature to make changes directly to the license). Your general counsel may also require specific language for certain clauses, so consult with them in advance.
Model licenses exist to help ease the burden of licensing. A model license can be used to learn from, copy language, and reference when working with vendors. The Big Ten Academic Alliance, California Digital Libraries (University of California), and the Greater Western Library Alliance (GWLA) have their own model licenses; and there are many others. LIBLICENSE, from where we have pulled our sample language, is a popular model license hosted by the Center for Research Libraries.
License Provisions
1. Authorized Users
The authorized user clause defines who can use licensed content, an important component to any contract. LIBLICENSE recommends that each institution create their own custom clause for this secti