This “legal companion” is massive in both size and scope, and not the sort of text one reads from beginning to end, although I highly recommend that anyone involved in licensing e-products in a library read through the preface and first 195 pages (Chapters 1-4) under the rubric “Before You Read the License: Essential Background Concepts”. This section will assist anyone responsible for e-licenses of any sort because it outlines both vocabulary and ongoing issues. In its entirety, this volume presents a comprehensive picture of e-resource licensing today, with sections that also address concepts and example-contracts.
While I have been responsible for e-contracts at my institution, and as a member of a committee that makes decisions on resources for the entire University of Wisconsin system since the early 1990s, I have learned much of what I know on the job, in a very practical context. Still, this first section has clarified some recurrent issues I have encountered, such as the difference between user expectations and vendor offerings, starting with “A Brief Comment on the Law” and the differences between contract law, Uniform Commercial Code and the legal basis for fair use as re-interpreted in the e-resources environment.
But the work includes much more in the two additional, substantive sections on the “The Range and Nature of Information Resources” and “A Licensing Reference Toolkit”. The work includes 17 chapters and >700 pages, which include a case index to help readers locate decisions about particular issues in e-licensing, and a subject index. Users will doubtless address their particular concerns over an individual contract through use of the subject index or specific chapters in Part 3, which illuminate problems of licensing through articulation of specific vocabulary, identification of key clauses in a contract or the penultimate Chapter 17, with 126 questions and answers for evaluating licenses. This last chapter is the one I would read after perusing Chapters 1-4, but you might also want to look at Chapter 15, a mere 100 pages deconstructing a few common library licenses. Chapter 16 is most applicable on an “as needed” basis, as it lists actual “Sample Key Clauses” in licenses.
As a whole, this title should be on the shelf of every librarian or administrator who has personal responsibility for e-resources in his or her library or university. It will answer most of your questions and be often consulted.
