Western Libraries

Acceptable Use Guidelines for Electronic Resources

The University of Western Ontario (Western) has negotiated, on behalf of its user community, many license agreements for electronic resources. These agreements govern appropriate use and the protection of copyright. Publishers monitor usage on a regular basis and your permission to use a licensed resource can be blocked if inappropriate use is discovered and verified. Violation of a license agreement by anyone in the user community can potentially result in the cancellation of the agreement and the suspension of access for the entire institution.

It is the responsibility of each member of the Western community to be aware of and abide by the following conditions when using the electronic resources made available by the Library.

  • Access to these resources is limited to authorized users: students, staff, and faculty of Western holding a valid Western Identity account, and under the terms of most license agreements, walk-in users of the Library.
  • Authorized users with a current Western Identity (including a User ID and Password) may access these resources from on-campus and from remote locations.
  • Authorized users may view, download, copy, print, and temporarily save SINGLE COPIES of individual search results or SINGLE COPIES of individual articles [i.e. not entire issues of journals] for personal use, educational use, scholarly research or scientific study, in accordance with Canadian copyright law (see Guide to Copyright at UWO). License agreements permit the downloading of a reasonable portion of the content of a digital resource.
  • Authorized users may post links to specific content in such a way that it is available only to other authorized users (e.g. links to content from access restricted course management web sites)
  • It is not permitted to use robots or intelligent agents to systematically download or reassemble any portion of the licensed products.
  • Authorized users must not transmit, disseminate or otherwise make the licensed resources available to unauthorized persons or organizations, by any means including sharing of passwords.
  • Commercial use is not permitted.

License conditions may be shown on the web site of a given electronic resource under such headings as "Acceptable Use", "Conditions of Use", or "Copyright". License conditions may also be indicated on an article saved or printed from a database or online journal.

Summary Table

Normally acceptable to:NOT acceptable to:
search, view, retrieve, and display content for non-commercial personal, instructional, or academic research needs use electronic resources provided by the library for commercial purposes
download, print, copy, or temporarily save reasonable amounts (according to Canadian Copyright law) of the resource for non-commercial personal use engage in systematic or substantial printing, copying or downloading of content (such as entire journal issues, financial and/or data sets, e-books, etc.)
share content with other current Western faculty, staff, and students share content or right to access with unauthorized persons or organizations
post links to specific content in such a way that it is available only to other authorized users post actual content or articles to web sites or listservs, private (e.g. a corporate intranet) or public
access the content remotely if you have a Western Identity (including a User ID and Password) modify or alter the content of licensed resources in any way

Unacceptable use of Electronic Resources

User accounts with suspicious patterns of behavior are blocked from accessing the Western Libraries’ proxy server. In addition Western ITS is contacted with evidence of the suspicious behavior and a request to have the Western computing account blocked.

When a Western computer account has been disabled, the user can no longer access any of the Western online services including off-campus access to library resources, e-mail, webCT, course registration etc. In order to reinstate access the user has to request ITS to reactivate their computer account.

Last revised on September 6, 2011