My talk is organized around a set of questions. This is not in an attempt to confuse you, rather it is to reflect the stage we find ourselves in; there are more questions than answers in the area of consortial licensing. Also, questions make us think; answers pretend that there are already solutions. Questioning will, I hope, involve all of you in arriving at some tentative answers today.
Electronic information, especially that provided by monopoly organizations, are often beyond the means of a single organization. There is a growing trend towards joint purchasing, consortial agreements, and partnerships. I will explore the potential and the pitfalls of implementing shared electronic information services.
Many electronic products are priced out of reach for a single institution. As budgets become tight, libraries look toward consortia as a way of reducing costs by subscribing as a group to commonly used databases, relying on the economics of scale to bring prices down. Furthermore, consortial licensing often serves the "greater good", in that larger partners carry some of the cost for the smaller ones (e.g. in the case of Academic Press electronic journals). The technological capacity of the group frequently jumps to that of the most advanced partner.There should be much less duplication of effort for even such products that could be afforded individually, e.g. in developing a single contract, in negotiating all customization of products together, and in joint implementation, publicity, problem solving, and training. Consortia are also more likely to be able, utilizing the expanded resources among the membership, to add value to the products that they purchase, e.g. by adding local holdings to citations. Traditionally, libraries networked products locally, but more and more people agree the CD-ROM LANs may be a thing of the past. As a recent quote1 puts it: " CD-ROM has always been more suitable as a publishing and distribution, rather than a retrieval, medium. Libraries have stretched the retrieval capabilities of the little discs right to the limits of the network, and in many cases, transferred the resource to hard disks to mimic more closely the on-line system that they really wanted but could not afford." As a member of a consortium, a library is much more likely to be able to afford, for instance, access to a flexible client/server search and retrieval system, preferably via the Internet.
Finally, the vendors themselves are moving towards consortial licensing as a preference. Witness a recent e-mail from the National Federation of Abstracting and Information Services (NFAIS) to the members2, advertising a special event:
WHAT'S THIS "THING" ABOUT LIBRARY CONSORTIA?
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Library and academic consortia should be ready before the vendors are!
Yes and no. There are good outcomes from a number of consortial efforts:
Example: Public Libraries. The North of Boston Library Exchange (NOBLE), a consortium of 15 area libraries, are implementing consortial access to EBSCOHost's MasterFile index and fulltext database. Something they could not afford individually.
Example: Digital image rights licensing. The Museum Educational Site Licensing project (MESL) is a collaborative exercise to reengineer the distribution of art. MESL has established terms and conditions for the educational use of museum images and associated information from six museums, seven universities, and the Library of Congress (currently still in a two year experimental phase). This is an example of educational institutions licensing their own products in a responsible and reasonable way.
Example: Phased consortial agreements. The Council of Prairy and Pacific University Libraries (COPPUL) in Canada allows members to join initiatives progressively; first the "big three", then middle-sized libraries, and so on. I was involved with some of the negotiations.
Example: Subject and Project based consortium. The Library Service Alliance of New Mexico ("Alliance") is an alliance of six Sci/Tech Libraries; three from Universities and three from the local National laboratories. Members of this group has been successful in obtaining access to subject databases that would be impossible to afford singly and has created the opportunity for other members to share in these if and when they can afford to do so. We are currently working on consortial licensing for electronic journals. Having Los Alamos National Laboratory Library as a member brings tremendous added benifit to the rest of the group in that we can help underwrite the customization and enhancement of the products we purchase. One of these is to link citations found in the Science Citation Index (SciSearch©) to full text articles of jointly purchased electronic versions of sci/tech journals.
Can groups really get their act together to do the job? Yes, if due process is followed in establishing a legal entity and if bylaws are clarified before making consortial decisions. Also, keeping to the time-honored rules for conducting good meetings will make difficult decisions easier, especially if each member gets an opportunity, early on, to describe their local systems operation; what's good about it, what their machine and people strengths are, and what the organizational infrastructure and funding obstacles might be. In deciding on any joint purchase, decision making will be easier if there are clear goals and priorities for the group, e.g. priority is given to products serving undergraduates/the public/ researchers, or priority is given to products which require minimal implementation effort, for instance, access via the internet using a standard browser.
Possibly. One thing is for certain, it can only be as good as the group's planning and preparation, i.e. how many questions you ask and how assertive and cohesive the group is in negotiating with experienced commercial vendors. A great psychological "prop" for members is a list of what would constitute a "Fatal Flaw" in any contract - three Fatal Flaws and the deal is off.
4.1. Know as much as you can. That means asking questions and the best way to do so is to develop guidelines to measure a contact against. At UNM we developed such guidelines (in your handout - appendix 1.) which is currently in draft only, but may be useful for you to look at.
4.2 Have criteria that MUST be met, as well as preferred criteria. The UNM guidelines were written into a Check List (in your handout - appendix 2.) to ensure that we do not miss anything in the excitement of aquiring a new product. These should preferably be written into more detailed questions for those contract clauses that cause the most concern.
For instance, item number B.13 in the UNM check list : "Does the license allow the library to define the user population ...?"(appendix 2.) can be refined into the following questions:
Refining questions regarding legitimate uses could be :
The latter is such an important issue that we decided at UNM to adapt a rider regularly attached to all licenses by Loyola University of Chicago4 for our own use. This "Rider to Modify an Agreement" is in your handout (appendix 3); see particularly clauses 3 and 4.
Ultimately, the best solution to getting consistent licensing will be through the use of "License Brokers" somewhat like the current journal vendors. Tony Ferguson ( Columbia University), one of the negotiators for the Northeast Research Library Consortium (NERL) said: " ..what I hunger for is a vendor who will do all the work commercial e-journals seem to be requiring and let me get back to worrying more about user needs and collection content."5
Consortia has leveridge; the larger and/or wealthier and/or more influential the consortium is, the more leveridge it has. It is important to let the vendor know, early on, that the group will be tieing the fees they are prepared to pay to the degree to which their criteria has been met. Tough bargaining stances are also more creditable coming from a group, e.g. could you as an individual say the following to a vendor like ISI or Elsevier: "We can only afford a network license for your product if the price is within the X dollar ballpark" ? Probably not! As a well organized group with more financial clout, we could and should. The vendor then has the option to choose to get some money or none! When I was involved with negotiating a contract for COPPUL with Elsevier Inc. to pilot an electronic journals trail, that is just what we did ... and the company choose not to make money, rather than meet us halfway!
The best way to start negotiations is to ask for a free trial or offer to be a beta test group for an evolving product. This should be free to members of the consortium, except for their local investments of people's time and the use of existing hardware at each site.If members and their local users are satisfied with the product, the group should begin planning the contract negotiations, especially what the product is "worth" to them. Decide on the amount which will be the bottom line. Then ask for a draft contract and invoice from the vendor. Insist on a dedicated sales representative to whom the consortium's negotiators will direct all communications and questions. Explain the major issues and concerns to this person; being honest about whether and how these issues will affect the purchase decision. It is also important to try to find out if other organizations or consortia have signed licenses recently or are in a similar negotiating phase. This information is hard to get - using the library Internet grapevine and informal networks may be the best way to do this. Vendors are loath to divulge such information as they see this as weakining their bargaining position.
Responding to the contract:
This is the most problematic phase as individual members will have to "sell"
and get approval for the contract and subsequent changes and additions from
their "home" organization's decision makers. This is made easier if such
persons or committees were kept informed at each step of
the process and funds were identified in advance.
Once a suitable contract is negotiated with the vendor, the group should
decide on the best way to invoice members for their portion of the licensing
fee. Either, directly from the vendor to each member, or as a single invoice
to the consortium, to be paid from membership fees.
The short answer is: you negotiate a license that over-ride copyright. Other speakers will be dealing with some of these issues at the conference, but for all intends and purposes, with the right license you should not have to worry about copyright. It is, however, prudent to protect the consortium members from third party liability, i.e. what your users do with the information they retrieve. An appropriate waiver should be attached to the contract. See the example of such a waiver in your handouts (Appendix 3; items 3 and 4)
Potential exist, especially for investing in a standard platform to mount common databases, like the Wilson databases. SilverPlatter's ERL platform would be ideal for this purpose. Where can we get funding? "The Government!" seems to be the obvious answer. However, good consortia look at their joint resources first, exploring how reallocation can help provide the needed funds or some of it. In New Mexico we also have the opportunity to work with the various Federal Laboratories and Dept. of Defense installations. We can also tie projects to objectives that will serve large underserved groups, like Native Americans, improving our chances to get funding from national programs like the NSF. International funding for links to or joint ventures with Latin American countries, may also be available.
This last point is actually not a question, but a hard reality consortias have to deal with. It is an issue of organizational culture and our ability to take managed risks in an uncertain environment, in uncertain times. Our options, however, are fairly clear: we can choose trailing edge technology which is individually affordable but ultimately pleases no one, or we can be part of a potential "New Mexico Virtual Library", that pool resources and take risks to serve its users better. If such risks pay off, State and other funding would be secured. If we fail as a Consortium, at least we are in it together and the political fall-out is distributed among the members! As a group we also have the potential to look more objectively at the lessons learned from both failure or success. What Barbara Steissand said about money in "Hello Dolly" is also true for success and failure: "Money [ or failure, or success] is like manure if you spread it around, it makes things grow!"
If you are now convinced that consortial licensing has greater benefits than going it alone, keep the following in mind. Be prepared to compromise and let go of control and/or preferred ways of working or preferred platforms, when the greater good is served. Also, be prepared to say NO when your local customers or conditions makes it impossible to join the group, and do it in such a way that it does not prevent the rest of the group from pursing the project further; you may be able to join at a later date.
I believe that the benifits of consortial licensing are greater than the drawbacks, which can be limited by careful planning. Consortial licensing might not be so critical if national organizations could put pressure on vendors to make licensing simpler and more affordable; as Warro4 recently suggested: " A great service to the profession that would benifit all libraries ... would be for the ALA and appropriate divisions such as LAMA to devise reasonable agreements and pressure appropriate producers and distributors to use them in place of the present agreements" (p.177) - the so-called "standard contract".
Because of New Mexico's relative isolation, Government, Academia, and Industry should be encouraged to fund statewide consortia for licensing information products for the use of all of the citizenry and for the benifit of the state's economy in an era where "knowledge" is a major product and "knowledge workers" a valued resource. We, as an organization and as individuals, can ensure that this happens by getting together to plan such proposals.
Does the license :
Does the information provider :
Does the license :
Does the electronic information product or service :
Is this the sole:
* Adapted from a Rider produced for Loyola University of Chicago. (Warro,
Edward A., "What have we been signing? A look at database licensing
agreements." Library Administration & Management, Summer, 1994, Vol.8,
No.3, pp. 173 - 77)
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