Thanks to those who have responded to my request for information on the
question of whether to say yes or no to Bender's cd offer. I thought that
I would clarify the offer now that I have the agreement in hand that we must
sign. First of all it is an offer to law school subscribers only. Bender is
offering for 3 years after the date of the agreement to provide subscriber
at no extra charge a subscription to Bender CD products to which the subscriber
does not have an existing subscription as of the date of the agreement.
During the term of the agreement (3 years) the subscriber must maintain
subscriptions to Bender products "whose combined annual subscription cost
equals at least 95% of the combined annual subscription cost of subscriber's
up to date Bender subscriptions as of the date of the agreement." I assume
this means we can cut a little but not a lot. Then the agreement has a line
where the amount of your current subscriptions is recorded.
Furthermore, we (the subscriber) have to agree to permit use of the products
to only "officers, directors, faculty, employees, and currently enrolled
students of subscriber." The University of Tulsa Law Library, as a private
institution, has a policy whereby we charge attorneys,who are not TU grads
and law firms for access to our library. We can restrict use but at what
cost. Will students use these CDs enough to justify devoting a work station,
and purchasing equipment. Will our other users resent another restriction
on their access to our resources?
I hope this defines a bit better the offer. Many of the responses I have
received have described this offer as the one made several years ago with
the old software that did not work very well, we could never get it loaded
properly so we just put the cds in a drawer. This offer is different, the
search engine is Folio and there is a link to LEXIS to update your research.
Anyone in the law school community recognize this offer? Have you taken it
and signed the agreement? How is it working in your library? Have you
received technical support or training support when you requested it? Are
students, faculty, staff actually making use of the CDs? How are you
handling restrictions to non-law school patrons?
Thanks to all of you who have sent me comments and information so that I could
define some of the issues to consider. We have a librarians meeting next
week to come up with a recommendation to our director. If anyone has further
comments, please send them along. I will let the list know of them.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Nov 14 2007 - 20:49:16 PST