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During the past several years, vendors of electronic resources have been monitoring their systems for occurrences of the downloading of large volumes of material by individuals who access these systems through libraries. These incidents violate license agreements between libraries and vendors. The perpetrators may be legitimate authorized users of a library, or they may be unauthorized users who have found a temporary hole in network security and attain access through open proxy servers or other means. Some use technical tools, like robots, to facilitate quicker systematic downloading. These acts may result in cessation of access to the resource for a limited time until the library investigates the situation and reports its findings to the vendor. Librarians have options for investigating these incidents, working with vendors, and preventing such incidents from happening. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the significance of open communication between libraries and vendors. Compared to typical customer/vendor relations, the nature of relations between libraries and vendors. The strong relationship between libraries and vendors is key to the continued development of products and services for use by librarians and patrons. Two factors at the core of library/vendor relations are open lines of communication and the basic sharing of information. An understanding of needs is considered the most significant element in the library/vendor relationship.