LibAnswers

Iowa State University Library licenses a large collection of online resources for use by students, faculty, staff, and, when possible, on-site visitors.  Use of these resources is governed by the terms of the license, copyright law, other applicable laws and international treaties, and the provider’s Terms of Use.  All use of library electronic resources is subject to the Iowa State University policy on Acceptable Use of Information Technology Resources (https://www.policy.iastate.edu/ITacceptableuse).

Users must comply with all applicable laws and university policies when using these resources.  Misuse, including unauthorized reproduction or distribution of licensed content, is prohibited. The licensor (i.e., the author and/or their agent(s)) retains the copyright to their intellectual property. Removing, obscuring, or modifying copyright notices included in the licensed content is prohibited. These resources are generally licensed only for non-commercial research, education, or teaching use.  Any attempt to resell licensed content is prohibited.

Electronic resource providers may block users when their monitoring systems suggest a breach of their terms, and the entire institution may consequently lose access in some cases.  They may also take further legal action. They may take action when:

• They notice excessive or systematic downloading of their resources (e.g., attempting to download all of the articles in an online encyclopedia, downloading all of the articles in a volume of a journal, downloading a large amount of content over a short period of time).
• They detect use of automation (robots, scraping, spiders, AI agents, etc.) to programmatically download content.
• They find users are downloading content or reverse engineering their platform in order to create a derivative database, make content available on public websites, or otherwise infringe upon their intellectual property rights.

It is the responsibility of each individual to ensure compliance. When in doubt about whether a particular use is authorized, please contact the library.