Wrangling Services Contracts in Libraries

As more and more academic libraries outsource information technology services and enter into cooperative consortial schemes with other organizations, librarians push into a minefield of contractual negotiations, obligations, and liabilities more complicated and consequential than the typical e-resource licenses is. A poorly wordsmithed license may result in loss of access to journals, whereas becoming entangled in troubled consortia, watching an essential technology go offline during finals week, or getting audited by a vendor without contractual safeguards or recourse can produce much greater financial and administrative burdens. This concurrent session was a crash course in negotiating service contracts favorable to libraries, focusing on legal language and ramifications rather than traditional interlibrary loan or course reserve clauses. Coverage included contract terms to incorporate or avoid, guidance on wordsmithing vendor contracts, and excerpts from real-world contracts that participants could visualize and workshop during the presentation. Attendees gained a clearer understanding of how to maximize value on investment and limit jeopardy on contracted services for their libraries