Advocate Health - Midwest Library's electronic resources are generally covered by a license rather than copyright law. In general, licenses don't restrict use of the content more sharply than copyright law would. Although all licenses could be different, generally the following uses are permitted provided the user is an authorized user (i.e., Advocate Health - Midwest teammates):
- downloading, searching, retrieving, displaying and viewing, copying and saving to a secure network or other electronic storage media and storing or printing out single copies of individual articles, chapters or entries for the authorized user’s own personal use, namely scholarly, educational or scientific research and Advocate Health - Midwest's internal business use
- transmitting material to a third-party colleague in hard copy or electronically, for personal use, namely scholarly, educational, or scientific research or professional use (i.e. sending an article to a colleague at another institution with whom you collaborate)
- using, with appropriate credit, figures, tables and brief excerpts from individual articles, chapters or other entries for their own scientific, scholarly and educational works such as presentations
- creating links to the licensed product provided those links don't result in access to licensed content by anyone other than authorized users (i.e. for journal club)
- supplying print or electronic copies of individual articles or parts of articles to individual patients for medical information purposes, provided that such dissemination does not result in distribution of a substantial or material portion or volume of the licensed product
The following uses are generally prohibited:
- using a web crawler or other application to systematically download content from the licensed product
- reselling content from the licensed product
- systematically distributing material from the licensed product such as through social networking sites (i.e. posting a full article on a publicly accessible site)
- making a derivative work from the material in the licensed product
Linking out to resources that contain the information you want to use rather than copying or redistributing it is a great way to avoid any potential legal entanglements that come with using legally protected material. If your audience can access the library resources, linking is easy and safe. Consult our guide on creating persistent links to library resources for help.
