Alisa Wynn

IUPUI SLIS L595 – Electronic Materials for Children and Young Adults
Dr. Annette Lamb
Summer Session I, 2007
May 16, 2007

Tremor 3.3:
Three Databases: An Exploration of Licensing Issues

As reflected in the accompanying chart (http://tinyurl.com/3c9jhw)

illustrating my exploration into the licensing issues of 3 databases, I chose the
following products:

1. Women and Social Movements, Basic Edition (which I'll abbreviate as WASM)

2. ProQuest Newsstand

3. Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center (which I'll abbreviate as Opposing

Viewpoints)

Introduction:

Women and Social Movements, Basic Edition

Updated quarterly, WASM is a database that has organized its 2100 primary
documents (all related to women's studies) around "document projects" that provide
between 20-50 primary documents that address the central question of the
document project (see http://tinyurl.com/3a69n9). Currently, WASM consists of
74 document projects, such as the one entitled, "How Did the Republican Party
Respond to Suffragists' Entry into Electoral Politics in New York, 1919-1926?" (by
Kathryn Kish Sklar and Nicole Hunt) has 22 associated primary documents, including
a number of texts, a speech transcript, and even the December 11, 1917 letter
written by Alice Wadsworth of the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage
to Charles E. Fuller (http://tinyurl.com/2tgcbm). Due to the method of
integrating a number of primary sources around a central question or context makes
WASM a potentially wonderful way of teaching history to young people.

ProQuest Newsstand
Broadly speaking, ProQuest Newsstand refers to a database that, at its core,
consists of a "Major Newspapers" collection, "which includes national and leading
regional papers such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA TODAY,
Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, The Atlanta Journal- Constitution, Barron's, The
Boston Globe, The Guardian, The Christian Science Monitor, and The Washington
Post" (http://tinyurl.com/2sk6fl). The number of newspaper titles a library
decides to subscribe to through ProQuest Newsstand is highly customizable
depending on the needs of the subscribing library and its patrons. For instance,
IUPUI's University Library describes its subscription to ProQuest Newsstand as
providing "selected full text for 25 national and international newspapers. The
database also contains full text television & radio news transcripts, and selected full
-1-
text for more than 200 regional (U.S.) newspapers...[including] full-text content of
the Indianapolis Star from 1997 to the present (http://tinyurl.com/3aw5qg).

Opposing Viewpoints
Controversial social issues such as cloning, emigration and immigration,
poverty, war crimes, and affirmative action are addressed by this database by the
use of "viewpoint articles, contextual topic overviews, government and
organizational statistics, biographies of social activists, court cases, profiles of
government agencies and special interest groups, newspaper and magazines
articles, primary source documents, images, and a collection of subject-indexed
Web sites" (http://tinyurl.com/28pken).

An Exploration of Licensing Issues: Brief Summary of Findings:

For the most part, all three of these databases offered both free on-site access
to patrons, as well as remote access via some type of log-in/authorization method.
WASM seems to be the exception to this in that public library patrons may only
access this database on-site.

WASM is available for annual subscription or for one-time purchase of

perpetual access. Additionally, in order to accommodate subscribing entities on a
limited budget, WASM is available for subscription on a sliding scale and discounts
are offered at times. ProQuest Newsstand my be paid for on a fee-per-article basis,
or by other by a more formal subscription, the terms of which seem negotiable from
the language contained in the license agreement. Due to the fact that ProQuest
Newsstand offers so many variations of packages, this does make sense that pricing
is contingent upon the specific package designed by the subscribing entity.

In trying to piece together information on subscribing to Opposing Viewpoints,

it seems that prices vary greatly depending on the number of concurrent users
desired and perhaps other factors I was not able to determine. Apparently,
depending on the package chosen, there is a first time flat fee price, followed by a
flat fee renewal price upon the end of the contract. Discounts seem to be available,
as well.

For the contractual language defining "authorized users" (or patrons),

contractual language on some notable restriction placed on web-use of the
databases, and numerous links to sources cited, as stated above, check out the
accompanying detailed chart (http://tinyurl.com/3c9jhw).

Lastly, in commenting on the term "perpetual access" referred to by WASM as

being available for purchase, the article, "Perpetual access to electronic journals: A
study of one academic research library’s licenses" authored by Jim Stemper and
Susan Barribeau provides an in-depth look at this issue. Stemper and Barribeua
(who are Electronic Resources Librarians at the University of Minnesota Libraries and
University of Wisconsin Libraries respectively) define “perpetual access” as the
contractual assurance that the library will have permanent access to the
electronically licensed materials that were paid for during the period of the license
agreement
-2-
 In this article, they summarize their analysis of contracts between a large
research-level university library and fifty providers of the library’s electronic
journals. Stemper and Barribeau conclude that libraries, and most critically
research libraries, should be committed to negotiating contracts that address
perpetual access. Specifically, “how such access will be provided, to what content
and by whom, and under what cost and format conditions” should be stated in the
contract. This article suggests that a possible leveler of libraries’ collective contract
negotiation playing field is each library’s willingness to back out of the contract if
perpetual access rights are not granted. For the librarian who might be considering
the cancellation of print journals in favor of e-journals, the issue of perpetual access
should be pivotal in the decision process.

References:

How did the Republican party respond to suffragists' entry into electoral politics in
New York, 1919-1926? (1998). Binghamton, NY: Women and Social Movements in
the United States 1830-1930. Retrieved 16 May 2007 from:
http://tinyurl.com/35zeso.

Stemper, Jim, and Susan Barribeau. 2006. Perpetual access to electronic journals:
A study of one academic research library’s licenses. Library Resources & Technical
Services 50 (April): 91-109. (WilsonWeb)

-3-