Licensing Agency
The SURF Licensing Agency was set up in 2001 to negotiate with academic publishers. The Licensing Agency represents the libraries associated with Dutch research universities (united in UKB) and universities of applied sciences (united in SHB).
The aims of the Licensing Agency are:
• to set up a consortium of academic libraries for collective negotiations and purchasing;
• to conclude advantageous framework agreements;
• to continue to develop licensing policy and models jointly with UKB, SHB and SURFfoundation.
Many of the licences concluded thus far cover libraries at both the research universities and the universities of applied sciences. This serves to bolster the libraries’ negotiating position and improve cost-effectiveness.
The Licensing Agency has achieved several successes. It has, for example, negotiated licences with a dozen major publishers, including Elsevier, Wiley and Springer/Kluwer, for full text versions of digital periodicals. This means that most of the collections of periodicals and information databases held by the Dutch academic libraries are available in digital form, making the notion of a Digital Library a reality.
The Licensing Agency is part of SURFdiensten BV. The restricted part of the SURFdiensten website has an up-to-date list of licences.
The licence managers are John Jansen and Els van Adrichem. (T +31 (0)30 298 3000)