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By Tuula Haavisto - October 2001
CELIP, Central and Eastern European Licensing Information Platform is working towards raising awareness among librarians about purchasing electronic material; which nowadays also includes knowledge on contracts between libraries and vendors. Buying a book or a hardcopy of a research journal and buying access to an electronic information resource are very different processes. Tuula Haavisto, CELIP Project Manager, reports on how CELIP can help librarians make the latter a lot easier.
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CELIP is funded by the European Commission and run by EBLIDA, Tuula Haavisto Library Knowledge T:mi and ten library associations in the participating countries: Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.
The CELIP project is due to last 15 months, from 1 November 2000 to 31 January 2002 and consists of three main actions: A two-phase survey about the licensing situation in the countries mentioned, ten licensing workshops, and a common meeting with the representatives of right owners. Information is being disseminated via the Web site [1].
EBLIDA has been active in training librarians in copyright and licensing matters since the mid-90’s. ECUP, the European Copyright User Platform was introduced at the same time and is consistently the most well known platform, thanks to the EBLIDA Web site. The newest project, CELIP, is a direct successor to CECUP (1998-99), the successful effort which concentrated on copyright matters in the CEE countries. The library associations have now reached the status as copyright partners in their respective countries and effort is once again necessary now that concerned countries have to adopt the new EU copyright directive into their own legislation.
The need to go further from copyright to licensing information and experience sharing was made clear in the CECUP copyright workshops. The European Commission was willing to finance this project as part of the IST programme, and so CELIP began on 1 November, 2000. The partners are the same as in CECUP: EBLIDA is again in charge of co-ordinating the project, and the writer of the article is the Project Manager. Ten library associations in ten EU accessing countries take care of the work on-site. The Steering Group remains nearly the same too. It was and is a very central and responsible group. All the members are very good at sharing project information amongst themselves and with their respective countries.
The CELIP objective is to raise the awareness level of librarians about licensing issues when providing electronic services. Librarians all over the world have to learn new skills to enable them to purchase electronic material. When librarians are no longer buying ownership of physical objects like books but access to information (electronic journals and databases) the librarian is faced with the complications of provisions of use for electronic resources. CELIP is targeting these situations. The key here is not in selecting electronic resources, nor evaluating their quality or their technical level but the legal position of librarians.
CELIP is there also to maintain the good initial contacts established under CECUP between librarians and right owners in CEE countries. The second discussion on user rights in the electronic environment was organised in June 2001. We had four guests from the CEE countries and three from international or foreign right owner organisations. Our discussions were based on statements and policy papers from both sides, and they were considered to be very useful. Especially the TECUP Memorandum of Understanding) [2], an important European consensus report on electronic publishing, was presented and discussed. Many participants mentioned that it was important to recognise the support from both sides for this document. The results of the common meeting will be reported by the follow-on group to TECUP, the Frankfurt Group. The common will to continue these contacts was also expressed in the meeting.
The project, as part of its work, is producing a survey about the licensing situation in the concerned countries. The first version of the results was published on the Web in May 2001 [3].
The licensing situations in the C&EE countries vary a great deal. Single licenses in single cases are known in nearly all the CELIP countries. The consortium model is only now stepping in. Slovenia has the longest experience, from 1997 on, in a countrywide licensing consortium. In Hungary, there are more than 20 consortia between libraries and vendors, and ca. 15 in the Czech Republic. These consortia are contemporary and they have been compiled according to the subject. In the Czech Republic the Ministry of Education has been active in initiating consortia forming, and is also in charge of the costs of many of the contracts. Government financing will cover the years 2000-2003, and after that the libraries must find new ways to arrange the financing. Of the 15 consortia at least two (EBSCO and Proquest) are open for all types of libraries. Estonia, being a smaller country, is looking for a consortium co-operation with Finnish libraries. Bulgaria has recently founded its two first consortia. The initiation-maker was a vendor, Martinus Nijhof. The costs in Bulgaria are paid by libraries and partly by Tempus Project. Slovakian libraries are negotiating with the Ministry of Education about a countrywide consortium. In Romania, Latvia and Lithuania the only consortia are the eIFL consortia.
The eIFL Direct project (Electronic Information for Libraries Direct) by EBSCO and the Soros Foundation Network Library Programme is an interesting case. EIFL Direct is comprised of more than 40 countries (including the CELIP countries) making it the largest library (information) consortium in the world. It allows libraries in participating countries to have unlimited access to over 5.000 full-text, English-language journals, primarily in the humanities and social sciences. The costs for 2001 are paid by the libraries, national governments or national Soros Foundations. The advantage to the participating countries is the ready negotiated, reasonably priced framework contract.
The public libraries and librarians in the CEE countries have also been included in eIFL. Therefore they are more experienced in electronic resources, than their Western European counterparts in non-English speaking countries.
In mid-September 2001, six of the ten workshops were held. In the workshops special attention has been paid to the basic terminology and partners in licensing, to licensing statements and principles and to experiences from different countries. The national presentations given so far have covered the contract law as well as experience sharing from case libraries in the countries that have licensing contract experience. In licensing negotiations, libraries meet different legislation from the countries of the producers and vendors, and it is important to understand one’s own legal position.
There are some preceding projects which offer good ready-made material for the CELIP workshops. TECUP (Testbed implementation of the ECUP framework) [4] has already been mentioned. The material found on the ICOLC (International Coalition of Library Consortia) Web site [5] is also useful. The IFLA Licensing Principles make useful background documents [6].
A poster session about CELIP was presented at the IFLA Boston conference in August 2001. The Slovenian Steering Group member, Dr. Maja Zumer, gave a presentation about the licensing situation in these countries in the open session of the IFLA Committee on Copyright and other Legal Matters [7].
The last CELIP Steering Group meeting will be held in Helsinki in November/December 2001 in connection with the Euro ICOLC conference [8]. This offers a good opportunity to get in contact with European colleagues dealing with the same matters.
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Tuula Haavisto
Project Manager,
C/o e-Office
4. Linja 24
FIN-00530 Helsinki, Finland
Phone: +358 - 40 - 568 9396
Fax: +358 - 9 - 7289 5060
Contact information for the co-ordinator:
EBLIDA
PO Box 43300
NL-2504 AH The Hague
The Netherlands
Phone: +31 70 309 0608
Fax: +31 70 309 0708
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For citation purposes:
Haavisto, T. "CELIP: Licensing Information for Librarians in Central and Eastern Europe", Cultivate Interactive, issue
5, 1 October 2001
URL: <http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue5/celip/>
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