Imagine you're at the AALL 2050 Business Meeting in San Francisco, CA:

A librarian no one in 2010 has met, because he hasn't started his career yet, presides as president. After the treasurer's report, it's time to award the president's certificates of recognition. Among those called to the stage: a wizened Jenny Westlaw, honored for 40 years of service to the law library community. As Jenny makes her way to the stage, the librarians spontaneously rise to their feet and give her a standing ovation.

Yeah, right.

I've been trying to figure out something (polite) to say about Ms. Westlaw and her counterpart Johnny since I discovered their existence a couple months ago. (Incidentally, via a site with a url that revealed Thomson Reuters is outsourcing some of their marketing--sloppy, but not a huge surprise.) Since that discovery, the Westlaws have been easy targets for private jokes and mockery.

So here's the thing: the scene described above happened just as I described it this year, except with Cathy Lemann presiding instead of some unknown whipper snapper. And in place of Jenny Westlaw, it was HeinOnline's Dick Spinelli being honored for his 40 years of good work.

And I'm not sure why it took me so long to figure out, but that's when it really struck me: the reason some of us have such a strong negative reaction to Johnny and Jenny is that they are fake people. Characters. Dick is real. And he's got his own, non-scripted personality and has taken time to get to know us over the years, and isn't going to disappear when corporate HQ decides on a different marketing direction.

I like Dick Spinelli. When I visited the Hein booth at SEAALL as a baby librarian, he made me feel welcome and also made it clear that he had a working relationship with my director, mentioning her name without any prompting or guessing. And it's not a problem of old vs. new ways of doing business, because I also like Fastcase's Ed Walters, who let his personal passion for design shine through in the session he spoke at, especially as compared to the more corporate Lexis and Westlaw speakers. I even like my local Lexis and Westlaw reps.

Beyond being merely fake, there's also something a little creepy treehouse about Johnny and Jenny--like we're supposed to pretend it's normal for a legal information vendor to hire actors for us to interact with. (I think I heard that J&J were already Thomson Reuters employees, but the point remains since they're not playing themselves.) I don't know about anyone else, but if that's something I want to do, I'll go to a dinner theater show or visit the Plymouth Colony reenactment, thanks very much. I'm at a loss as to whom they are supposed to appeal to. Maybe students, but definitely not librarians young or old. And I doubt students love them either--they're usually even better than us at detecting fakes.

Sure, it's harder for Westlaw as an entity to connect with us because it's part of a giant corporation. Giant corporations like to be uniform and careful about their public presences, which often results in bland, personality-free communications. No surprise, but I'd rather have bland than fake.

I had a boss in my pre-library life who used to stress to the account reps that ours was a relationship business, not a transaction business. I've come to believe that outlook is valuable across many fields, including our own. I'd bet Spinelli and Walters might even agree with it. Unfortunately for Westlaw, it's pretty hard to have a relationship with a fake person.

Yesterday there was uproar in the law library community over this charming ad Westlaw sent to some of its subscribers:


Yes, I agree. It's insulting and offensive. But beyond the outrage, I'd love to see it lead to more discussion of the positive things we as law librarians are going to do to change things so that next time a major legal publisher makes such a blunder, we all just laugh it off. And more important than discussion, action. What do we, the legal information experts, do to take more control of legal information back from vendors?

Do we start at home, encouraging our in-house reviews and journals to publish in accordance with the Durham Statement (have you signed yet?): commiting "to keep the electronic versions available in stable, open, digital formats"?

Do we continue to advocate for better and easier access to government information that ought to be free anyway? How many law librarians have signed the Improve PACER petition yet? There are definitely more than 682 of us.

Do we get more active finding creative ways around such shortcomings, like creating RECAP?

Do we help come up with more tools like handy LibX, the brainchild of a Virginia Tech librarian collaborating with a VT computer science professor?

Do we go continue to call for better user interfaces from vendors? How about going beyond critiquing the vendors to become expert interface designers on our own, making more useful library websites, less sucky OPACs, and engaging institutional or regional repositories?

Do we support our local legal information institutes and figure out ways to make them even better for research?

There's obviously not any set answer here, just lots of possibilities we need to get serious about exploring and implementing so we don't have any reason to get freaked out next time a vendor encourages users to make an end-run around us.

I'm not big on sports metaphors, but in his AALL 2009 keynote, Jonathan Zittrain mentioned the concept of library defense. Even I know enough about sports to know that you can't win only playing defense. So what's our offense?

SEAALL Session A1
Licensing and Copyright: Negotiating Licenses Rocky Balboa Style
Friday April 13, 2007

Speakers: Jim Heller, Director of the Law Library & Professor of Law, College of William & Mary
and Claire Engel, Director of Library and Records Services, Troutman Sanders LLP

Notes:

Jim Heller:
Access - ownership

Copyright - federal issue

• but licenses are contracts, thus governed by state laws

UCITA - attempt to create uniform computer/information law

• biased toward publishers/providers
• MD and VA are the only states that passed it

When you own your own amusement park, you can do what you want

• When you visit Disney, you must follow their rules
• Access rules for resources we don't own can prohibit fair use, copy making, ILL

3 documents handed out-

• Special Library Association's Principles for Licensing Electronic Resources, 1997
• National Library of Medicine's Policy on Acquiring Copyrighted Material in Electronic Format
• Licensingmodels.com's academic: single institution sample (UK-based site, but models for public and private libraries)
  

Some courts hold click-through licenses as binding; some don't

Salespeople will say anything - take advantage of this and get them to go to bat for what you want

Avoid "licensor can change at anytime" clauses, or specify that changes must be sent in print form (because if it's an email from a vendor, it could be deleted before we read it)

Rights of users

Commercial use: this usually means reselling or repackaging content rather than using it at a for-profit institution

Hold harmless clause - in case publisher is infringing

Claire Engel:
All databases go into the library budget, even if a marketing database for the advertising department

Time issue in negotiating due to lawyer demands for products

Ground rules for dealing with licenses:

• everything is negotiable
• what can't you live without?
• prioritize
• be prepared to walk [sounds like buying a car!]

Engel starts with dollars - no point negotiating something that's definitely out of budget

Some questions to ask:

• How do summer associates fit in? Contractors?
• What happens if a practice group leaves the firm (or if there is a merger?)

Watch for clauses about availability of resources

Get a clause that articles mentioning the firm can be posted on the intranet

Most contracts want to turn librarians into copyright Nazis

Acts of god/force majeure - watch out: these used to be one line, but now include everything and the kitchen sink

Tips:

• check list
• keep files of good clauses
• good relationship with sales reps
• remember licenses are for limited $$ and limited time - prioritize which to negotiate

Thoughts:
With the name Rocky Balboa in the subtitle, I expected this session to focus on going head-to-head with vendor reps in negotiating licenses. It was more going over various contract clauses, what to watch out for, and how to prioritize, and that was fine. In fact, I was surprised by how interesting I found it all.

Reviewing and negotiating licenses isn't part of my job description, but if it ever should be, I now have more confidence that it's something I could both handle with some competence and enjoy to some extent.