Move towards cross-border licensing for e-resources

A couple of interesting items came my way today via the JISC Collections Weekly Update. Firstly, the announcement that Knowledge Exchange – an umbrella organisation of four national ICT bodies – has begun a multinational tender process to explore with publishers the possibility of cross-border licensing arrangements. JISC (the Joint Information Systems Committee) reports that:

"with national licensing agreements for online resources well established in the four countries – the UK, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands – the aim of the initiative is to explore whether further economies of scale can be secured and new and innovative business models developed through an international approach."

You can find further information here.

Secondly, JISC are running a licensing workshop on Copyright in the Digital Age on 30 March in London. The workshop will focus on digital copying and issues relating to sharing between collaborative institutions. Understanding copyright is a key issue in digital curation, as when people are unsure of their legal rights and responsibilities they are sometimes reluctant to act and afraid to use resources.

You can find more details and register on the JISC Collections website.