Contract Clauses & Negotiating with Electronic Publishers

David Whelan recently posted an interesting query to CALL-L subscribers with respect to contract clauses and publishers. Citing a contract negotiation session he watched in the Virtual Component of the recent SLA conference, someone asked about "the types of clauses that libraries frequently get removed from, or that they have successfully added to, contracts with electronic publishers."

David subsequently turned a similar question back to CALL-L subscribers, and whether they had gotten a clause removed, edited to their needs, or added a new clause to a contract with any online legal publisher. And, if so, whether they would share that clause.

The summary document David's produced is great. Among the suggested clause changes, additions, or removals are the following:

• keep the termination notice period as short as you are comfortable with
• remove indemnity clauses in government contracts since library cannot commit government to these
• eliminate specific number of terminals ("users") if license is restricted to a physical space so as not to limit access points to library hardware
• amended termination clauses
• amended user ceilings
• amended usage levels
• amended copyright limitations

David invites readers to contact him with more additions or suggestions. It's fun to imagine this list growing.

[note: the above document is linked to with David's permision...]