Imagine that the sales representative from your book vendor is on the telephone offering you a 20 percent discount on the new edition of a reference book in your collection. You say you’ll take it, but only if he is willing to throw in the first year’s supplement for free. Is your response an acceptance of the salesman’s offer, meaning that it’s too late to back out? Or is it a counteroffer?

Here’s another scenario: You would like to add a link to your library website, but, in order to do so, you notice that you will be required to click the “I agree” button on the external site. Somewhere in the back of your mind, a voice is cautioning you that adverse consequences in terms of legal liability could result. Should you proceed?

Library professionals involved with acquisitions, systems, reference, or administration who have the time and stamina to persevere will find The Librarian’s Legal Companion for Licensing Information Resources and Services immensely helpful in answering questions about the commercial side of librarianship, such as the scenarios detailed above. To be sure, author Tomas Lipinski knows his way around the library. Rather than giving us a treatise on commercial law in the abstract, Mr. Lipinski punctuates his points with real-world examples that sound as if they could have been lifted verbatim from conversations in academic, public, or just about any other type of library.

On the down side, this is not an easy book to get through. Because the level of information here is extremely dense and conceptually difficult to master, the book is ideally suited for use as a textbook and recommended with a note of caution for all others.