E. Negotiating Licences for Electronic Resources

• Author: Ted Tjaden
• Profession: National Director of Knowledge Management McMillan LLP
• Pages: 294-296

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As discussed above, a major disadvantage of electronic resources is the general lack of ownership of the materials being paid for. What one is

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paying for is access to the material, not ownership. Thus, once one stops paying for the CD-ROM or access to the database, there is generally no further access (for CD-ROMS, this happens where there is a builtin "time bomb" feature to disable the CD-ROM after the expiry of the licence period). Some care must therefore be taken when entering into licence agreements for CD-ROMS or online databases. The following points are usually the major issues that arise when entering into licence agreements to acquire law-related resources in electronic format:

· Audience? Single user versus multiple users? Most publishers quite naturally charge more where electronic resources are being accessed by multiple users. It is usually quite obvious when "single user" access is required, especially for sole practitioners or smaller law firms, and the cost of obtaining single user access is usually straightforward. What can often require negotiation and some explanation is where the electronic resource will regularly be used by more than one person via a computer network. Some vendors have policies to automatically calculate the number of licensed users based on the number of lawyers in the firm, even where not all lawyers in the firm will use the product. It therefore becomes necessary to evaluate how much the particular resource will be used and by how many people at the same time.

· Controlling multi-user access: For commercial online databases, passwords are often assigned to individual users, something that allows tracking of searches by individuals. In some settings, particularly academic law libraries, passwords to some law-related Internet subscription databases can be controlled by IP (Internet Protocol) address, thereby allowing any user within the organization to access the database. Regardless, care must be taken to prudently manage passwords to online databases, including access to the firm’s intranet or other internal computer file folders that are related to legal research.

· Hardware and software requirements: In acquiring CD-ROMS, it is important to check any specific hardware or software requirements for the product. The move to electronic resources in legal research saves space and labour costs associated with print law-related materials but does involve fairly heavy investments in...