Summary: Emery & Stone - Chapter 3

Emery and Stone’s chapter on “Acquisition of New Content” walks through some of the steps that occur after a library or other institution has identified and chosen a resource for acquisition. Even before the contract negotiation, the authors recommend comparing the specifications to ensure that the purchaser and the seller agree on what and how the desired resource will be sold. Then contract negotiations can begin. Emery & Stone outline fourteen different “deal-breaking” contract clauses that ERM librarians should watch for. A good ERM librarian should pay close attention to these terms: the definition of site, definition of users, remote access, IP authentication, Access & Connectivity, Indemnification, Privacy, Usage Statistics, Content Transfer, Third-party discovery tools, Loss-of-funding, Location and Guidelines, Perpetual Access, and Price cap allowance.

Reaching agreement on these terms is just a first step; ERM librarians must pay close attention to subsequent drafts of the license to ensure that their requested terms were actually incorporated. The whole negotiation process can involve a lot of back-and-forth communication between the parties. Because it is unlikely that the parties will accept all of one side’s terms, it is important to be flexible but also to know the priority level of individual provisions. This is another instance where a model license is very handy and it is good to have meetings with your institution to determine priorities and goals before entering any negotiations.

After an agreement is finally reached and signed by the proper authority within your institution, make sure to record the appropriate administrative metadata. These records keep track of important dates (renewal, cancellation, etc.) and payments, but also provide a baseline for future negotiations.

In the context of this week’s readings, this Emery & Stone piece provides the broad overview of the licensing process, the Chapter 4 piece talks more about the total content of a license itself, and Chapter 16 focuses exclusively on important terms within a license. While it is important to have the broader understanding of the steps in a negotiation, in my experience the interactions with another negotiating party are much more fluid. Maintaining a professional yet friendly rapport with the other party is crucial to attaining your goals. While the two parties clearly want different things, this relationship should be collaborative rather than antagonistic. A lot of this came out especially in the Chapter 4 reading, but it seems to bear repeating.