The Limits of Licensing: A Literature Review

"A growing share of library collections is digital. With books – a good – replaced by access to databases – a service – traditional acquisition is increasingly replaced by licencing agreements. This has brought many advantages – costs related to physical storage and upkeep are falling, and libraries have access to a wider range of content than ever before. However, the move from purchased ‘hard’ copies to licensed ‘soft’ ones has also brought challenges. In order to understand these, and the evidence behind them, IFLA commissioned a literature review in late 2016. This looked through the available academic and grey literature, from theoretical analyses to practical survey work on libraries’ experience of licensing, and its limits as a tool."