Licensing

I. READING

a) stress the first syllable:

academic, acceptable, digital, license, seek, vendors;

b) stress the second syllable:

accessible, acceptable, attract, define, resources, provider, procedure, supports;

c) stress the third syllable:

complementary, contractual, information, institution, publication, recognition.

1. Read and translate the text:

Licensing Principles

The worldwide marketplace for all types of electronic information resources is rapidly being developed as publishers and vendors who create electronic information seek to attract libraries of all types (public, academic, special, national) as their customers. Today, libraries around the world continue in their role as mediators between citizens, including those affiliated with specific institutions, and information and cultural expression roles that persist even more – energetically, it appears, for electronic information than for print. And, just as libraries advance the archiving and preservation of traditional media, so they are seeking ways to ensure that electronic resources will be archived and preserved to be accessible over a long period of time. Pricing also remains an issue: libraries continue to express concerns about the fact that a number of electronic resources appear to be priced higher than were their print counterparts.

While the library community strongly supports the continuation into the digital environment of exceptions that have been granted under copyright law, there are some areas where different procedures and policies need to be developed to handle electronic publications. Of particular interest to IFLA in the development of licenses is the following:

Use of electronic information everywhere in the world is, at this time, usually defined and described by contractual agreements, otherwise known as licenses. These licenses describe comprehensively the terms of the provider/library relationship. Contracting is a comparatively new (1990s) way of doing business for most parties in the information chain.

Licenses are pure marketplace arrangements in which a willing information provider and a willing purchaser of information access come together to make arrangements, deal by deal, resource by resource.

User rights are defined within the terms and conditions of the licenses. They are not governed by (comparatively well understood) copyright legislation to the same extent as is the use of "fixed" or traditional information formats.

Libraries generally provide patron access to such information via access to remote publisher or vendor sites, rather than library-controlled sites. Yet, the tasks and costs of libraries and information providers with regard to long-term archiving and preservation of electronic resources are disturbingly unclear. While a license cannot resolve this complicated set of electronic archiving issues, it will, generally, recognize them and express a set of commitments or expectations on the part of the contracting parties.

IFLA views the licensing arena positively, although key issues remain to be resolved. In particular, licensing is showing itself responsive to the complex business arrangements being entered into between information providers and library consortia of different types and sizes. IFLA encourages and supports the evolution of all types of libraries negotiating as consortia. Nonetheless, even with the current move to licensing as a complementary means of regulating the use of electronic information, libraries and their users need effective, well-balanced national copyright laws that recognize not only the copyright owners' need for remuneration and recognition, but also the critical purposes of public information, education and research. This balance, struck in carefully crafted copyright legislation, must find expression in all information resource licenses.

Дата добавления: 2014-12-23