Katherine Klosek
Director of Information Policy and Federal Relations
Association of Research Libraries (moderator)
Rachael Samberg
Director, Scholarly Communication & Information Policy
University of California, Berkeley
Katie Zimmerman
Director of Copyright Strategy
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The US Copyright Act includes special rights for libraries and the scholarly activities they facilitate, e.g., research. Scholars rely on these rights to conduct inquiries using computational research methodologies like text and data mining and the use of trained algorithms. However, publishers sometimes curtail scholars’ rights through the electronic resource license agreements that libraries sign. A forthcoming open ebook by five law and licensing experts from institutions across the US—E-resource Licensing Explained to be published by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL)—will empower academic librarians and library staff with licensing responsibilities to advocate for license terms that enable computational research. The guidebook includes easily digestible legal explanations and pragmatic strategies for preserving rights that users already have under US copyright law, particularly in the face of restrictive license terms that would otherwise constrain or eliminate those rights. The briefing will include a discussion with some of the guidebook’s co-authors, who will share their own insights, challenges, and successes in negotiating for license agreements that facilitate computational research, and the panel will provide an update on the guidebook’s publication.