JISC Collections, an organisation that manages the acquisition and provision of digital resources for universities and colleges in the UK, will be working with DataSalon to specify and build an online licence comparison site. The site will enable librarians to view, compare and export the terms of licences expressed in ONIX-PL format. Launching at the end of 2010, it is projected to provide a user-friendly means for librarians to review individual licences, view two licences side-by-side, or compare terms across many different licences at once.
Libraries typically have many different licence agreements for their digital resources, but understanding their permissions and communicating these to users can typically be a difficult process when dealing with complex and varied paper contracts. In response, EDItEUR, an international standards group, developed the ONIX Publications License format (ONIX-PL), an XML Schema which provides a standardised way of expressing licence terms electronically. Partnering DataSalon with EDItEUR and JISC Collections, the licence comparison site project will further build on this work by making licences expressed in this format easily accessible to the UK academic library community.
DataSalon had previously worked with JISC Collections to create the Academic Database Assessment Tool (http://www.jisc-adat.com), a free online database comparison service which aims to help libraries make informed decisions about future subscriptions to online resources. It provides access to detailed information and title lists for major bibliographic and full text databases, and delivers service information for database and e-book content platforms. The site has reportedly received strong support from university librarians in the UK and worldwide since its launch in 2007.
The license comparison site will seek to repeat this success and provide librarians with an entirely new way of viewing and comparing the terms of different licences online. It will initially be launched with around 80 of the most common JISC Collections electronic licences in the system, and will be provided as a free online service to participating libraries.
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