Databases A to Z
Acceptable Use of Electronic Resources
Access and use of electronic resources provided by the UW Libraries are governed by
publisher license agreements. These legal contracts allow UW students, staff, and
faculty to read, download, and/or print electronic content for non-commercial, educational,
or personal research purposes. Users of library-licensed resources must comply with
the terms of agreements and be aware that publishers may monitor use of electronic
resources to enforce the terms of their licensing agreements. Violation of license
may lead the University to impose on an individual the sanctions provided in UW Regulation 8-1 (PDF) or a publisher or vendor to turn off the University's access without warning.
In order to assist library users to use the Libraries' electronic resources responsibly,
we have summarized typical license provisions.
- Users may not facilitate unauthorized access by others, specifically; they may not
share their computer account passwords.
- Users may not engage in systematic downloading of licensed content (for example, downloading
entire issues of electronic journals or large-scale downloading from databases to
create other collections of data).
- Users may not distribute copies of material to individuals or groups outside the University
of Wyoming.
- Users may not share client software used to search licensed resources with individuals
or groups outside the University of Wyoming.
- Users should give proper attribution when quoting from material.
Licenses often prohibit the downloading and posting of licensed content, even if used
for course websites or course reserves. In general, it is preferable to link to articles
(with an appropriate authentication mechanism) rather than to download and post articles
to a server. See
Creating Links to Articles and Books. The Libraries'
electronic reserve staff can assist faculty to provide appropriate use of licensed material for educational
purposes.
If questions arise about whether or not a particular action is permitted, the resource's
website usually provide a "Terms and Conditions" section that can be consulted. If
you have further questions, feel free to
contact us.
Back to Title List
