Licensing Prep

["Phillips, Kara" <Phillips@seattleu.edu>]

Dear Liblicense,

I am writing an article on licensing.  I have two questions.

1)  What kind of training do librarians want their sales 
representatives to have before licensing products?  What kinds of 
preparation, training, research, and specialized or general 
knowledge should they have before licensing materials to 
libraries?  For example, I find that new sales reps are not 
always familiar with regional consortia.  If they have not worked 
in an academic setting, they may not know what a proxy server is.

2)  On the flip side, for the publishers, what kinds of 
preparation, training, research, and specialized or general 
knowledge should librarians have when starting to license 
databases?  For example, I would think understanding the sales 
commission structure would be helpful so that we don't 
inadvertently bypass our salerep.  Perhaps an understanding of 
who does training versus who does sales?  Corporate hierarchy?

If you have ideas, suggestions, anecdotes, please respond to me 
directly.  I will not quote anyone in the article directly unless 
authorized.  I will summarize for the list if I get enough 
responses.

Thank you very much.

Kara Phillips
phillips@seattleu.edu