W&M Libraries subscribe to hundreds of databases and thousands of electronic journals, books, and other sources to support the educational and research needs of our current faculty, students, staff, and on-site researchers. The contents of these resources are available only for individual educational and research purposes. The terms and conditions for use are specified in electronic resource license agreements. Violation of these terms by individual library users potentially jeopardizes future campus access for all W&M users and can result in immediate suspension of a patron's access to online library resources.
By accessing these resources, you, as the user, indicate that you are aware of the following terms and conditions, and agree to conduct your use of these materials accordingly.
Uses that are allowed:
- Using online resources for scholarly, educational or scientific research, teaching, or private study
- Searching and viewing articles and search results on the screen
- Saving a digital copy or printing a copy of a limited number of extracts from the database for academic purposes
- Sending a copy of an electronic article or other document to another authorized user (i.e. current W&M faculty, students, or staff)
- Quoting limited portions of database contents for reports, essays, projects, and other materials created for academic purposes, with appropriate acknowledgement of the source (such as footnotes, endnotes or other citations)
- Posting the URL to the publisher's version of an article on a class website, or posting the permalink to an article from the Libraries' catalog on a class website (both permit only authorized users to access them)
- Posting the PDF of an article, chapter, or other source inside Blackboard where only current W&M students can access the document
Uses that are NOT allowed:
- Selling or redistributing licensed content to third parties without expressed permission, including posting content to mailing lists or discussion boards
- Selling, redistributing, or republishing licensed content for commercial gain
- Using a database or any part of the content contained in a database or online resource for commercial research; for example, research that is done under a funding or consultant contract, internship, or other relationship in which the content is delivered to a for-profit organization
- Using robots, spiders, or other intelligent agents to do bulk or automatic downloading of online content
- Downloading, printing, or distributing entire journal issues or volumes, or large portions of online resources
- Posting the PDF of an article to an open website or syllabus [instead, post the proxied URL to the article so that authorized users can navigate to the W&M subscribed content]
Under some circumstances, violation of these guidelines could result in disciplinary sanctions. Please refer to W&M's Acceptable Use Policy for complete information.