RE: concepts of perpetuity

["Tracey Thompson" <thomtd@nmsu.edu>]

There are additional challenges with electronic perpetual access 
that do not exists with print journals.  The burden of 
maintaining the print journal rests with the library, and the 
long term maintenance of print journals such as shelving and 
binding are pretty basic, relatively speaking.  The basic 
concepts of binding print journals has remained the same for 
quite some time.  In contrast, long term access to electronic 
journals is more complex and costly.  This is assuming, of 
course, that the option to receive the content on CD or maintain 
at the licensees location are not used.  Really, how useful are 
those two options to most libraries? Not only do publishers have 
to maintain staff and equipment to provide access to electronic 
journals, they have to deal with changing technology.  How we 
store and retrieve electronic information has changed in the last 
five years and even more radically within the last twenty.  To 
give perpetual access to content publishers have to continually 
migrate data to new platforms, etc.

This is a simplified version of the issues involved, and it is a 
round-about way of saying that for the publishers to promise 
perpetual access without additional costs is an unrealistic 
business model. What to do about the publishers that have made 
such promises? That I cannot answer.

Tracey Thompson
Acquisitions Librarian
New Mexico State University Library
MSC 3475 P.O. Box 30006
Las Cruces, NM 88003-8006
(p) 575-646-8093
(f) 575-646-7477

-----Original Message-----
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Nicola J. Cecchino
Sent: Tuesday, August 26, 2008 6:37 PM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Re: concepts of perpetuity

The institution cannot claim ownership on the platform which the 
content is provided (or anything related to the resource for that 
matter) - however, in the same way institutions pay for a 
subscription in print, and can keep them ad infinitum on a shelf, 
the same clause should be applicable in the licensing of an 
electronic resource (so long as the institution adheres to other 
applicable agreed upon reasonable clauses AND Copyright Law). 
Depending on how the institution negotiates their 
licensing/contracts, the publisher shall be obliged to provide 
any one of the following:

Access on the publisher's server
Access via CDs
Access via a document management system at the licensees location
etc.

Address how?  I'm not sure what you mean by details - it should 
be a reasonable agreement that the publisher/provider/licensor 
enables perpetual access to the licensee of the content that the 
institution has paid for.  Much in the same way that we have paid 
for print subscriptions and decided to cancel.  We don't give the 
literal print journals back - we keep them on the shelf.  In the 
same way, the action needs to be built into language in the 
agreement such that the institution/licensee does not lose total 
access but is allowed to maintain access to paid for licensed 
materials.

There might be references to clauses that might discuss in great 
details what access (re:  above) the institution may have in the 
event of cancellation, if there's a maintenance fee (aka one time 
fee for perpetuity) for keeping content on the publishers' 
servers, etc.  An understanding of how the publisher functions 
and provides its resources / content is key - then you go from 
there.

I hope this helps, I know this is overly simplified, it's brief.  :)

Nic

Mr. Nicola J. Cecchino, MLS, AHIP
Assistant Librarian for Reference and Technology
George T. Harrell Library, H127
Penn State College of Medicine
Milton S. Hershey Medical Center
Hershey, PA 17033-0850
Email:  njc12@psu.edu