The Code4Lib Journal – Making User Rights Clear: Adding e-resource License Information in Library Systems Mission Editorial Committee Process and Structure Code4Lib Issue 29, 2015-07-15 Making User Rights Clear: Adding e-resource License Information in Library Systems Libraries sign a wide variety of licensing agreements that specify terms of both access and use of a publisher’s electronic collections. Adding easily accessible licensing information to collections helps ensure that library users comply with these agreements. This article will describe the addition of licensing permissions to resource displays using Mondo [1] by Queen’s University and Scholars Portal (a service of the Ontario Council of University Libraries) [2] . We will give a brief introduction to Mondo and explain how we improved Mondo to add the license permissions to different library systems. The systems we used are an ILS (Voyager), an OpenURL Link Resolver (360 Link), and a Discovery System (Summon). However, libraries can use Mondo to add the license permissions to other library systems which allow user configurations. By Jenny Jing, Qinqin Lin, Ahmedullah Sharifi and Mark Swartz Introduction Changes in Canadian copyright law and in the way that universities approach copyright compliance, combined with the growing complexity of working with digital materials, have made copyright a priority for Canadian higher education institutions. One factor that universities worldwide have to consider when establishing copyright compliance initiatives is the vast array of database licenses that libraries sign in order to access electronic resources (e-resources). These licenses specify terms that users must follow in order to legally use these materials. For example, some licenses may allow users to include materials on learning management system sites. Others may allow libraries to loan e-resources to other libraries. This information is frequently only included in licensing agreements that are not accessible to users, or on website “terms of use” that are often ignored. Possible outcomes of not complying with these agreements include loss of access to databases and legal action. As a result of the inaccessible nature of these licenses, and the serious consequences of having users ignore these terms, it is essential to make this licensing information accessible to all users in a format that is understandable and clear. This is why many institutions have created databases that make license permissions available to all. When I started working as the Information Systems Librarian at Queen’s University Library in 2013, my first project was to migrate the library’s OpenURL Link Resolver from SFX to 360 Link. A major task in this project involved linking the license permissions from the Mondo database to the e-resources in the user interface of 360 link. We finished the project in two months and here is a sample record of an e-resource in 360 Link and its license page. (Figure 1). Figure 1. The user interface of 360 Link and license page The license links: before and after the migration Queen’s University Library uses Mondo, an open source application used to manage the copyright and license information for e-resources. Our Mondo is hosted by Scholars Portal, a service provider of Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL). (Figure 2). Because the license pages for our e-resources are created in Mondo, our task is to add the URLs of those license links to our library systems, for example, 360 Link. Figure 2. The relationship between Mondo and Queen’s e-resource Knowledgebase In SFX, this process is accomplished by inserting the license links into the “General note” field for an e-resource. Because of the migration away from SFX, we needed to build a new model for adding license links to our e-resources in 360 Link and other library systems. Michael Vandenburg, my supervisor, suggested using 360 Link Reset [3] and Summon_Click [4] to add the links to the user interface of these two systems. After discussing the priorities with my supervisor, my first step was to familiarize myself with Mondo, the open source software we use to manage the license permissions for Queen’s, as described in the next section. Mondo License Grinder Mondo is an open source application developed by the University of British Columbia Library in 2009 (https://code.google.com/p/mondo-license-grinder/ ). It displays license permissions for online resources. (Figure 3). A sample site is available at: http://queens.scholarsportal.info/licenses/ Figure 3. Customized Mondo by Scholars Portal – A to Z list and a license page The key functions and main workflow of Mondo First, authorized library staff must create license records for each type of e-resources and parameters are set based on the copyright agreement between the library and the database provider. Second, library staff copy the URL of the license page of an e-resource in the Mondo system and paste it in a target record in the link resolver system. For example, in 360 Link the link can be added in the “Public All Titles Note” field for the database “ABI/INFORM Global” (Figure 4). Then the “License Terms of Use” link for that e-resource will display in 360 Link. Figure 4. Create License page in Mondo and paste the URL in a record in 360 Link Issues to Overcome First, there were about 2,000 e-resources in our Serials Solutions’ knowledgebase and we needed to finish the migration from SFX to 360 Link in several weeks. Because 360 Link is a hosted service provided by Serials Solutions, we couldn’t batch load the license links for those 2,000 records into the database tables. During the summer, there were no student or library staff who could help us enter the data manually. In addition, we needed to add the links to the license information to other library systems, such as Voyager and Summon. Adding them in different library systems by myself would be very time-consuming. In order to finish this task by our deadline, we needed to find a new model for providing this service. Second, because the URLs of those license links are not in a predictable pattern (Sample records in table 1), we could not automatically generate the license links and add them in the target library systems. Table 1. The e-resource names in Mondo and the License URLs of the e-resources Database Names in Mondo License Link URLs ABI Inform Global http://queens.scholarsportal.info/licenses/ABI_Inform ACM Digital Library http://queens.scholarsportal.info/licenses/ACM_Digital_Library 19th Century UK Periodicals Online http://queens.scholarsportal.info/licenses/seventeenth_eighteenth_Century_Burney Finally, because we wanted to add the license links to our Discovery System (Summon) and there is no field that we could use to display that piece of data in Summon, we needed to work out a solution which could display the license links in different library systems using a predictable pattern rather than manually entering the links. The Solution: Enhancements to Mondo After reviewing all of the aspects of this project, we identified the following key issues/requirements to improve the workflow: We need to use a predictable, predefined pattern for the license URLs created in Mondo (For example, a base URL, plus the database name in a standard format), so that we can generate the license links with the same pattern in the target library system’s user interface. We need to have access to the configuration files of the target library system’s user interface (for example, we can insert JavaScript codes into the Summon search result page). We need to be able to read the e-resource names from the target library system’s user interface in order to generate the URL (for example, in Figure 1, the e-resource name is “ABI/INFORM Global”). We need to create a “general license” page for the e-resources which do not have a license page in our Mondo database. Based on the requirements we defined above, we made the following enhancements to Mondo: First, we added a new function in Mondo to automatically generate the URLs for the license link pages in a predefined pattern “(rawurldecode($db_name))”. This allows us to generate the same pattern of the URLs in different target library systems’ interfaces, so that we do not need to enter the license link URLs manually in Mondo. Add a JavaScript file called “licenselink.php” in the Mondo/Admin folder to generate the license page URL licenselink.php: //in index.php, get database name from url parameter $db_name = $_GET['name']; //get license $license= $db->get_license(rawurldecode($db_name)); //or redirect to an information page If($license== null){ $license= "generic_license"; } //redirect to license view ('Location: '.BASE_URL.'index.php?license='.$license); Modify the “Add/Edit a License” page in Mondo Second, in order to eliminate the need to manually enter the URLs of the license link in Mondo and save time, we modified Mondo/Admin/index.php and update.php to automatically generate the URLs and save them in Mondo. (Figure 5). This also prevents typos resulting in bad links. (For example, the URL for the license page of “Bibliographie der deutschen Sprach”, might be spelled wrong if the person who enters the URL of the license page does not understand the language). The detailed changes we made in Mondo are listed below: In mondo-license/Admin/index.php, we added the following code: $vendor=select('vendor',$vendor,$db); //Mondo code $consortium=select('consortium',$consortium,$db); // Mondo code $databases=select('databases', $databases, $db); //we added this line …