When librarians speak of negotiating contracts, they usually are referring to licensed electronic resources, negotiating terms as advised in the Center for Research Libraries' LibLicense Model and other best practices. Comparatively overlooked in librarians' conversations about licensing are memberships and service agreements. The objective of this session is to tackle an essential but often overlooked element of collections management: wrangling contracted services, be they consortial memberships, hosting agreements, outsourced work, proxy solutions, or any of the myriad other services that libraries may contract out to support collections and discovery. Service agreements pose a dramatically different set of concerns and priorities from the usual concerns, such as perpetual access and ILL rights, which dominate library literature about licensing. Few of us would think to reduce liability by striking "membership" and writing "participation agreement" in its place. Even fewer would think to steer clear of allusions to "consortium," as the term has legal meaning distinct from its use in library parlance. Attendees will engage with the presenter and with one another not only through Q&A but also through extemporaneous workshopping of key questions about best practices. Attendees will leave this session with a clearer understanding of how to maximize value on investment and limit jeopardy on contracted services delivered to their organizations.
