RE: Forrester Research license negotiations

["Seeman, Corey" <cseeman@bus.umich.edu>]

Christine -- This is a tricky situation that I have heard with 
this vendor and another institution.  At the Kresge Library, we 
have access to this product just for the students, staff, and 
faculty of the Ross School of Business.  We are an independent 
library here at Michigan providing the resource needs of the 
Business School faculty staff and students.  So this is not 
something that the whole University population has access to.

In reviewing the agree/disagree screen that our community members 
need to fill out on our site, I can see that we need to make some 
changes (including governance) to bring the contracts up to 
current standards.  But there is nothing specifically stated 
insofar as the rights of the different groups.  There are 
launching points for two different types of records (when the 
patron creates the account).  We have one for students and one 
for faculty.  Staff are going to use the faculty one and I see no 
issue with that and there appears to be nothing in our contract 
to prevent this.

There have been some vendors who have asked that our product be 
limited to certain populations of our users (no undergrads, no 
PhDs, etc.), but I let them know that it is not an option for us. 
While I am sure that it is possible, I do not want to establish 
different classes of users.  Our undergrads will not use some of 
our heavy databases, but we should not restrict them from doing 
so.

The case I think we can make for staff might be that many staff do 
research for the faculty.  People who are in faculty support roles will 
often download articles and reports for the faculty member they are 
working with.

I have often held that the vendor has the right to ask for anything they 
want and we, as the libraries, have the right to walk away.  I have 
heard of a few instances lately where vendors have been digging their 
heals in on issues that appear to be minor (at least from my vantage 
point).  These do not involve my library, but I am trying to come up 
with ways to get to yes (and so far have drawn a blank).  That is not to 
say that I am happy with all my contracts, but I suppose it is being 
happy enough.

Maybe the thing to do is to walk away. Let the vendor know that 
if they insist on this, you will have to find another resource to 
provide this information (maybe, eMarketer, Gartner, Frost and 
Sullivan, etc.) Another thing to do is to go back and say that 
the price reflects the full population...once you take these 
people out, the value to the school is less and you will expect a 
reduction in price.  This is not ideal, but it might be a good 
first step.

We primarily represent the Ross Community (Business School at 
Michigan) and then the University as a whole.  In that regard, we 
do not want to enter an agreement where the vendor limits who can 
use the resource within this universe.

Hope some of this is useful.

Best -- Corey
Corey Seeman
Director
Kresge Business Administration Library
Ross School of Business
The University of Michigan
cseeman@umich.edu
Kresge Library Home Page:
<http://www.bus.umich.edu/kresgelibrary/>
My home page: 
<http://www-personal.umich.edu/~cseeman/index.html>

________________________________

From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu on behalf of Christine Turner
Sent: Thu 3/22/2007 6:17 PM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Forrester Research license negotiations

Hello -

I have been negotiating over the past couple of months with 
Forrester Research <http://www.forrester.com/> on their license 
for our access to their database of research reports. Our current 
sticking point is their intent to restrict accounts to UMass 
Amherst faculty, students and librarians only, thus excluding 
staff and administrators. We have agreed that those with UMass 
Amherst domain email accounts will be able to register for 
Forrester accounts. They have asked us to further parse our email 
accounts into categories of community status in order to deny 
accounts to university staff. This prospect we find objectionable 
on the basis of both practicality and principle.

Do you know of any academic libraries that have negotiated with 
Forrester a license which includes all community members as 
acceptable users? Do you have any advice about license 
negotiations with Forrester?

Thanks for your consideration and input.

Best,

Christine N. Turner
Electronic Resources Librarian
Acquisitions Department/W.E.B. Du Bois Library
University of Massachusetts
Amherst, MA  01003
E-mail  cturner@library.umass.edu
Web http://people.umass.edu/cturner