Research Article: “Four Facets of Privacy and Intellectual Freedom in Licensing Contracts for Electronic Journals.”

The following article was published today in the May 2015 issue of College & Research Libraries. A preprint version was released one year ago.
Title
Four Facets of Privacy and Intellectual Freedom in Licensing Contracts for Electronic Journals 
Authors
Alan Rubel
University of Wisconsin, Madison
Mei Zhang
University of Wisconsin, Madison
Source
College and Research Libraries
Vol. 76 No. 4 (May 2015)
Abstract

This is a study of the treatment of library patron privacy in licenses for electronic journals in academic libraries. We begin by distinguishing four facets of privacy and intellectual freedom based on the LIS and philosophical literature. Next, we perform a content analysis of 42 license agreements for electronic journals, focusing on terms for enforcing authorized use and collection and sharing of user data. We compare our findings to model licenses, to recommendations proposed in a recent treatise on licenses, and to our account of the four facets of intellectual freedom. We find important conflicts with each.

Direct to Full Text Article (23 pages; PDF)

Filed under: Academic Libraries, Data Files, Libraries