These days nearly every library, whether public, academic or special, has access to licensed electronic resources, resulting in an increased need for library staff to understand licensing and its associated issues. This book, intended “to share information about licensing experiences, learn from the parties involved, and understand the impact of licensing throughout libraries”, is a timely and useful compilation of 12 articles on various aspects of licensing and its associated issues. The first article is a description of pricing models for academic publications, including their effect on collection development decisions and the potential impact of the open access movement. The second article presents the results of a survey of the ways academic libraries have been educating their users about license terms, and concludes with suggestions for improving practice in this area. The next three articles look at the issues licensing raises for interlibrary loans, the role of the Copyright Clearance Center, and using model licenses – the last includes a useful list of common terms and elements of a model license.
The vendor perspective is represented in two articles: one looks at the issues involved in using commercial partners to digitize public domain content, while the second discusses publisher concerns, focusing on revenue and control of content. The final set of articles covers licensing electronic books, library consortia, software for managing licenses, the legal issues associated with different types of licenses, and the history of licensing (with an emphasis on academic libraries). Each article ends with a brief bibliography of further reading. All of the contributors are experienced in negotiating and working with licenses, which gives their writing credibility.
The volume is typical of what we have come to expect from a Haworth Press monograph – a collection of articles sharing a common theme, simultaneously published as a serial, in this case the Journal of Library Administration. Each article can stand on its own, leading to a lack of integration which lessens the book's overall effectiveness. Though all of the contributors are based in the USA, the majority of the issues discussed are sufficiently general that they could be applied in other countries. The focus on current practice means that the book will be particularly useful to people seeking to understand the issues before negotiating their first license, or as a review for people with some experience in the area. It is recommended for library studies or professional collections in all types of libraries.
