Thanks to all who responded to my informal survey question yesterday
regarding who negotiates and signs your electronic resource license
agreements.  As is often the case with these types of surveys, the answers
indicated that the question could perhaps have been phrased somewhat
differently. My original query was: "Are your license agreements
negotiated and signed by library personnel or is this handled by your
university attorneys or university-retained law offices?"

It was also pointed out to me that the mailing list liblicense-l would
perhaps have been a better forum for this survey. I am not a subscriber to
that list, but a search of their archives did turn up a similar survey
done there in the past. I refer to the survey "How does your library
handle electronic serials? A General Survey," by David Kisly & Mark
Jordan. Apparently the results of that survey were revealed at the
conference: Access 2001, September 27-29 Winnipeg Manitoba, Crafting the
Information Edge. Unfortunately the link to the document for this
presentation on the conference web site is broken (does anyone have a copy
of those results?) If readers of this list know of any other previous
surveys done along these lines, either on mailing lists or in the
professional literature, I'd be glad to hear about it.

Now on to the survey results:

For many libraries, negotiations are handled by the library, but the
license is signed elsewhere on campus; in some cases the
procurement/purchasing offices sign the agreement. Often the campus legal
office reviews each license before sending it on to be signed. To come up
with a summary, I divided the responses into two categories: 1) libraries
which are not required to consult with other campus units (i.e.;
everything is handled in-house) and 2) libraries who have to send the
agreement elsewhere on campus to be negotiated, reviewed and/or signed by
third parties. Of those Category 2 libraries, I also counted the number
who were required to have the license reviewed by their campus attorneys'
offices.

Of the 29 replies I received the results are:

Category 1 - licenses can be handled in-house: 17

Category 2 - must consult/route to other unit(s) on campus before being
finalized: 11

Of the 11 Category 2 replies, four of those indicated that legal council
reviewed the licenses as part of the process.

Finally one library indicated that any licenses for products with a cost
of less than $25,000 were handled in-house; anything greater than that had
to be signed also by their Purchasing Office.

Again, thanks to all who responded.

Jack D. Fitzpatrick
Cataloging Dept.
Auburn University Libraries
fitzpjd@auburn.edu
334-844-0777