2 Contract Language INTRODUCTION This chapter will provide information and recommendations for numer- ous types of contract clauses. The chapter is or ga nized as follows: we address basic clauses that appear in almost all contracts, regardless of the nature of the contract. Next, we address common clauses that appear in various types of transaction-specific contracts. As applicable, we also discuss transaction- specific tips and things to consider. The coauthors’ intent is worth restating here: we intend for this book to be a starting point in your journey to improve your contract-review, contract- drafting, and contract-management skills. Throughout this book, we cite other resources. We highly recommend that you utilize the resources we cite because those resources go into much more detail in specific areas. While we briefly discuss confidentiality agreements, some authors have writ- ten entire books on confidentiality agreements. The same is true for hotel contracts. For the purposes of our analysis in the sections that follow, we assume that your organization primarily reviews and processes a contract document that a vendor provides. Even if your organization only uses organization- drafted templates, this information will still be useful because vendors will often push back on templates other than their own documents. Because many libraries are housed within government organizations, it is also useful to provide a short background on the concept of sovereign immunity. In simple terms, sovereign immunity is the concept that the gov- ernment (the sovereign) gets to decide when, where, how, and for what it may be sued. In other words, because of sovereign immunity, the government may only be sued for claims it allows and only in the forums (courts or similar bodies) it allows.1 Learning whether your organization has sovereign