Negotiating Licences for Digital Resources

Citation

Hannabuss, S. (2007), "Negotiating Licences for Digital Resources", Library Review, Vol. 56 No. 2, pp. 153-154. https://doi.org/10.1108/00242530710730367

This is a very practical introduction to its subject by Fiona Durrant, who is information centre manager at the legal company Baker & McKenzie in London. She says that the book “will help information professionals in all sectors and in all jurisdictions … get the best deal for their organization … It can act as a reference tool for experienced negotiators or as a primer for those who have never before been involved in the process”. With this clear intention and scope, then, the book succeeds very well indeed.

Three themes appear in the book – negotiating, financial and value issues, and law. Durrant weaves these clearly through a book full of helpful side‐headings to show how the advice if going. Her framework on negotiation draws on familiar thinking (by writers like Fisher and Ury (1999) on Getting to Yes and Ury (1991) on Getting Past No), with most‐favoured and walk‐away and best‐alternative positions. In itself this could end up merely a one‐minute‐manager check‐list to doing it, but Durrant applies it convincingly to the library and information professional. The context is that of such a professional buying electronic and digital resources, involving key others in the organization, identifying products and services which are “would like” or “must have”, negotiating on prices, trying to assure herself that a good trial will lead to a reliable product, and taking part in meetings and correspondence. It is clear the author has done it, so, even though it remains generic throughout (there is a tantalizing reticence about any names). An uneven section on implications for staff development comes towards the end.

The guidance on financial and value issues is likely to be a lot more helpful, above all to that first of the two target readerships, the experienced practitioner. This theme is well‐developed throughout, dealing with information needed by negotiators across a time‐line, the way who uses resources affects the pricing structures, the bundling of products, cross‐charging, tenders, using agents, the role of financial quotations, and budgeting. Simple demonstration examples are provided (as with a most‐favoured and walk‐away price from a publisher), and these issues are set within a value framework (high‐ and low‐value, unique or must‐have products as opposed to ones where alternatives lure you away). The third main theme is that of law, explicitly in a helpful sensible chapter on contracts (terms, interpretation, permissions, liability, confidentiality, standard, or model contracts from bodies like JISC and CHEST), along with a useful specimen with annotations. This side of defamation, I think some names – of content and service providers and of actual libraries – might have been provided, even if names had been changed. A case study or two, perhaps in appendices, please, for the second edition.

Durrant rightly admits that the information professional may have a procurement specialist at her elbow during negotiation, and that formal legal help in designing and interpreting contracts is the matter of other books (and often where formal legal advisers intervene), but she opens the door to what the working professional should know. Looking across the whole book, it fits together in a neat helpful way the ways in which legal and financial and corporate decision‐making can work together across a negotiation time‐line. The FAQs at the end reveal that she could have said more, at a deeper and more fascinating level, about the issues. It would have been good to have had more about applicable law, in the style provided by Pedley (2005) in his book on Managing Digital Rights.

Readers coming to the book expecting an exclusive focus on digital resources will find, admittedly, that they are there but that much of the discussion applies as much to everything and anything else, at any financial scale or political importance, a library or information service might buy. Pricing decisions come in but could be presented more challengingly for experienced practitioners, given the Machiavellian powerplay, above all about database and consortial licensing these days. Rupp‐Serrano (2005) provides an ethical dimension to the subject in her own book, and this could have enhanced Durrant's. I have no hesitation at all in recommending this to libraries supporting the study of the subject by students on courses and CPD, where it is sensible and to the point (and even contains scripts for negotiators). More experienced practitioners will not find much here.