PRINCIPLES FOR ACQUIRING AND LICENSING INFORMATION IN DIGITAL FORMATS

University of California Libraries
Collection Development Committee
May 22, 1996

The following list of principles is provided to guide the
University and its employees (at both campus and systemwide
levels) in developing and reviewing proposals to/from, and in
negotiating contracts with, providers of information in digital
formats.   UC librarians recognize that many of the issues
addressed in this document are not yet fully defined or
understood in the emerging digital age.  Accordingly, UC offers
this position as a starting point in a process that will require
much discussion, experimentation and collaboration before it is
complete.


1)  COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT

a. Conventional collection development criteria should be
paramount and should be applied consistently across formats
including digital resources.

b. Principal considerations include (1) establishing a coherent
rationale for the acquisition of each resource; (2) meeting
faculty and student information needs, providing orderly access
and guidance to the digital resources, and integrating them into
library service programs; and (3) ensuring that the advantages
of the digital resource are significant enough to justify its
selection in digital format.

c.  Balance must be maintained among:
    --disciplines;
    --information formats  (i.e., printed, a.v. and electronic
      media have different but equally essential purposes and
      audiences);
    --instructional and research tools;
    --different needs of each campus.

d. Priority should be given to digital format acquisition of
those resources which offer economies of scale by benefiting the
most  faculty and students (locally and/or systemwide).

e. Priority should be given to digital resources when they offer
significant added value over print equivalents in such ways as:

   --more timely availability;
   --more extensive content;
   --greater functionality such as the ability to invoke
     linkages to local and/or related  resources
   --greater access because they can be delivered rapidly,
     remotely, at any time;
   --improved resource sharing due to the ubiquity of digital
     resources;
   --ease of archiving, replacing, preserving.

f. UC should retain authority for selecting and deselecting
materials (content and format) and sound selection decisions
should not be compromised by provider-defined linkages between
print and digital products.

g.  A digital collection must contain a sufficient "critical
mass"  to evaluate its utility and to justify its selection.


2) COSTS & PRICING

a. Electronic content should cost less than its print analog,
unless there is substantial added value (e.g., Britannica
Online; or a bibliographic database enhanced with full text).
Publishers should be discouraged from increasing prices to
amortize conversion costs over short timeframes.  When multiple
formats are available, UC should pay only one price for the use of all.

b. For reasons given in 1f, electronic and print costs should be
separated. UC  should not be required to purchase both print and
its digital equivalent.

c. Content and access costs should be separated.  UC should have
flexibility in selecting appropriate access mechanisms
(including local or remote server, resource sharing agreements
with other institutions, etc.) and should be able to alter these
agreements for an existing license, subject only to access and
use restrictions in the license agreement.  The information
provider should inform UC how much of the total cost is
attributable to (1) licensing the content, and (2)  providing  access.

d. Information providers should be expected to demonstrate that
they are assuming a major share of the risk in developing and
marketing new products. UC, as an early participant and partner
in piloting products prior to general release, is making a
considerable investment in infrastructure, delivery mechanisms,
training and support; the information provider's pricing should
recognize this contribution.

e. The purchasing power of UC's collections budget is declining;
information providers should recognize this reality and track
their inflationary price increases to the U.S. Consumer Price Index.

f. UC prefers pricing based on the size of the actual community
which will use the digital information, or the actual recorded
use  (either unlimited simultaneous use or transaction-based
licensing, as appropriate) , as opposed to pricing based on the
size of the total UC  population.


3)  LICENSING

a. The license should include permanent rights to information
that has been paid for, in the event that a licensed database is
subsequently canceled or removed.

b. Information providers should employ a standard agreement that
describes the rights of libraries and their authorized users in
terms that are readable and explicit, and they should reflect
realistic expectations concerning UC's ability to monitor use
and discover abuse.  Agreements should contain consistent
business and legal provisions, including, for example,
indemnification against third-party copyright infringement
liability and permission to use records in personal
bibliographic systems.

c. As a public institution with a broad mandate to serve the
State of California, UC's "authorized users" include faculty,
staff, students and all on-site users of the campus or
University, and UC's "site" includes every campus location,
physically and virtually, and the Office of the President,
UC-affiliated hospitals, and any location where authorized UC
faculty, staff and students might be at home and abroad. "Users"
may include others directly served by UC (e.g., UC-managed
laboratories and other research and instructional facilities and
programs,  K-12 teachers, and outreach programs).

d. The licensed content, plus any associated features and
capabilities, should be accessible from all
institutionally-supported computing platforms and networked
environments; this access must be based on current standards
(e.g., Z39.50 compliant  in 1996) in use by the library community..

e. Licenses should permit "fair use" of all information for
non-commercial educational, instructional and research purposes
by authorized users, including  unlimited viewing, downloading
and printing.

f. Information providers should be able to link their access
control mechanisms to UC's  authentication infrastructure;
access to their products should not require individual passwords
and/or user IDs.

g. Licenses should not limit UC's rights to enhance or reformat
data (if content integrity is preserved) to make it more visible
or convenient for UC users (e.g., by providing links to other UC
holdings, or annotation for use within the UC community).

h. UC use data should be available to UC as part of contractual
provisions for a license and  the confidentiality of individual
users and their searches must be fully protected.   Use data
generated by UC may be available to the information provider.


4) FUNCTIONALITY

a. Data formats should follow industry standards and must be
fully documented.   Data should be platform-independent and
available in a multiplicity of formats (e.g., ASCII, PDF, SGML, etc.)

b. UC must be able to provide access from convenient
workstations connected to a network infrastructure which is
reasonably fast.  System capacity and bandwidth should be
adequate to provide response time favorably comparable to that
of existing MELVYL system databases.

c. Interfaces should be easy to master by ordinary users

d. Information providers must keep UC informed of format and
content changes and coordinate their implementation with UC.


5)  ARCHIVING

a. As research institutions, UC and its libraries have a
legitimate interest in maintaining archives and a mission to
ensure archival access.

b. Agreements should clearly state archival responsibility.

c. Agreements should permit UC to make/obtain digital and/or
printed copies of content  for archiving and for use in perpetuity.




Comments and suggestions are welcome and should be addressed to
the Collection Development Committee c/o David Farrell, Chair:
dfarrell@library.berkeley.edu; (510) 642-3773.