Licensing Resources

Licensing Principles

To support effective engagement and negotiation with vendors, libraries and consortia are encouraged to develop licensing principles to guide their efforts. Establishing these guidelines will help ensure that user community needs are represented, vendor interactions are approached with consistency, and your philosophy in fostering transparent licensing practices is clearly communicated. The sample principles below reflect a variety of perspectives including consortia, individual institutions, and subject-specific library organizations.

🌐 ASERL Eleven & Librarian Reviews of Vendor Agreements

🌐 Syracuse University Libraries Licensing Principles

📜 AALL Principles & Practices for Licensing Electronic Resources

 

Licensing Checklists

Licensing checklists are useful tools to review individual license agreements and guarantee that all required components are present. In developing a local licensing checklist, engage your legal counsel to ensure all required legal elements and clauses are fully represented and vetted. The sample checklists below reflect a variety of perspectives including consortia, individual institutions, and subject-specific library organizations.

🌐 California Digital Library (CDL) License Agreement Checklist

🌐 University of North Texas - Contract and License Review Checklist

📜 Appendix A - AALL Principles & Practices for Licensing Electronic Resources

 

Model License Language & Example Licenses

Model license language states the ideal terms of use for a library or organization. While model licenses are rarely accepted without negotiation, they help libraries identify and prioritize important clauses intended to serve their communities through access to a licensed collection. The resources below provide example licenses and model language to be adopted or adapted by libraries and consortia per local needs.

🌐 Model License Comparison Chart

• This chart provides model license clauses from a number of prominent libraries, consortia, and organizations on the subjects of course reserves, interlibrary loan, and scholarly sharing.

🌐 VIVA Consortium - ILL Rights in VIVA’s Contracts

• An innovator in e-book interlibrary loan, Virginia’s Academic Library Consortium (VIVA) underwent an extensive request for proposal (RFP) process in 2016 to secure ILL rights in a wide range of e-book collections. This webpage provides the e-book ILL license clauses for each of those collections. 

🌐 📜 California Digital Library - Redacted License Agreements

• A collection of redacted license agreements for a number of digital resources licensed through the California Digital Library. This resource includes licenses for databases, e-books, streaming media, and other digital content. 

📜 Boston Library Consortium - Sample License Language for E-Book ILL 

• Included as a resource in BLC’s E-Book ILL Roadmaps, this document provides several publisher-specific examples of ILL licensing clauses from our member institutions.

🌐 📜 SPARC Contracts Library

• Full text examples of Big Deal licenses from libraries and consortia. Though not specifically “model” language, this resource provides useful information about the terms and conditions publishers may seek to include in their standard agreements.