ISSUE RESOURCES

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LICENSING

One way of ensuring payment for digital material and of maintaining variable levels of control over it is to license its use. However, as the market for and pricing of digital material is still being tested and developed, buyers, sellers and users of material are currently treading very new ground. Below are some resources designed to guide us in the new territories.

Buyers & Sellers

Commercial Guidelines

Libraries' Experience

Museums' Ambitions

BUYERS & SELLERS

• Negotiating Networked Information Contracts and Licenses
  A guide for buyers and sellers of electronic information, produced by the Coalition for Networked Information as part of its Rights for Electronic Access to and Delivery of Information project. The Guide was conceived as a way of identifying networking issues, describing buyer/seller positions, and exploring business rationales to prepare both parties before entering negotiations for rights to networked information. It takes the form of a paragraph-by-paragraph analysis of contractual language in the networked environment.
  

   

  COMMERCIAL GUIDELINES AND PRACTICE

• A Useful Benchmark: The OURS Licensing Principles
  A set of principles laid out in a 1993 White Paper published by a software licensing task force of the Open User Recommended Solutions Consortium (OURS).
  
  
• Microsoft Licensing Policies: Answers to Frequently Asked Questions
  

   

  LIBRARIES' EXPERIENCE

• LIBLICENSE: A Resource for Librarians
  Yale University Library's assembly of material to assist librarians in understanding and negotiating licenses for digital materials from publishers. This includes a definition of terms and a particularly useful and developing set of links to actual publishers' licenses.
  
  
• Allied to the Web site, is the engaging LIBLICENSE-L listserv for discussion of relevant experiences and licensing issues.
  
  
• LET THERE BE LIGHT! A Conference on Licensing Electronic Resources: State of the Evolving Art, December 8-9, 1996. This is a summary of the Proceedings of this conference, organized by the Association of Research Libraries.
  
  
• "Licensing Electronic Resources: Strategic and Practical Considerations for Signing Electronic Information Delivery Agreements." Written by Patricia Brennan, Karen Hersey and Georgia Harpur, this 23-page booklet, published in January 1997, was developed as a guide to assist librarians in the development of a process for reviewing and negotiating license agreements. Association of Research Libraries. $10.
  
• Principles for Licensing Electronic Resources A set of principles being developed by six library association.
  
  

  MUSEUMS' AMBITIONS

• NINCH Article on Museum Licensing Initiatives:
  "Museums Collaborate in New Marketing Ventures for Digital Images"
  
• Ann Okerson, "Copyright or Contract?" Library Journal 122, 14 (Sept. 1, 1997): 136-139.
  
• Ann Okerson, Buy or Lease? Two Models for Scholarly Information at the End (or the Beginning) of an Era," Daedalus; Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 125, 4 (Fall, 1996): 55-76.
  
• David Bearman and Jennifer Trant, "The Art Museum Image Consortium: Licensing Museum Digital Documentation for Educational Use." Spectra 24, 4 (Fall 1997)
  
• Museum Educational Site Licensing (MESL) Project
  A collaboration of seven museums and seven universities, sponsored and organized by the Getty Information Institute and MUSE Educational Media, to define the terms and conditions for the educational use of digitized museum images.
  
• Art Museum Image Consortium (AMICO)
  A plan to collectively administer the educational licensing of the digital intellectual property of major North American art museums for the mutual benefit of museums and educational institutions.
  
• The Museum Digital Licensing Collective
  A collective under development by the MDLC Development Corporation

Last Modified: March 3, 1998