Dutch scientific/scholarly libraries – which have joined together in the UKB consortium – found themselves increasingly required to negotiate jointly with publishers of scientific/scholarly information. They did so:
- to strengthen the position of libraries and to offset the prices for scientific/scholarly information dictated by publishers;
- to generate the professionalism and expertise needed to successfully introduce large numbers of digital information sources.
This made collaboration desirable, preferably with an existing organisation that was not just familiar with the world of higher education but that had experience of concluding and managing licences. The SURF UKB Licensing Agency was set up to meet this need.
The Agency focuses on concluding advantageous SURF licences on behalf of Dutch scientific and scholarly libraries and the libraries that are members of the SHB, which represents the libraries at colleges of higher professional education. The Licence Agency’s object is:
- to create a consortium of scientific and scholarly libraries that will negotiate and make purchases jointly;
- to conclude attractive framework agreements;
- to develop licensing policy and models in collaboration with the UKB, SHB, and SURF.
Many of the licences that have been arranged apply for both the UKB and the SHB. All this contributes to reinforcing the negotiating position of the libraries and to cost efficiency.
Successes
The Licensing Agency has achieved a number of successes. For example, ten major publishers – including Elsevier, Wiley and Springer/Kluwer – have concluded licences for the full text of digital periodicals. In 2006, the Licensing Agency assisted the WSF (a group of public libraries with a scientific/scholarly support function) in arranging a large-scale licence with Elsevier for electronic scientific/scholarly periodicals.
This has made collections of periodicals and information databases at universities and other higher education institutions available to a large extent in digital form. The concept of the Digital Library has thus been given clear shape and form.
Maintaining “mega-licences” is not feasible for smaller libraries and the price of publications by scientific/scholarly publishers is constantly rising. This makes it difficult to keep collections up to date, so the Licensing Agency works with a shortlist. Each year, it draws up the list of parties that are to be approached on the basis of input from members of the UKB and SHB. The Agency uses the shortlist when arranging new licences.
More information
The Licensing Agency is part of SURFdiensten bv. The licence managers are John Janssen and Els van Adrichem (tel. +31 (0)30 298 3000).
The limited-access section of the SURFdiensten website gives an up-to-date list of licences.