Q. What am I allowed to do with online library resources?

Library resources found in our databases belong to the database and/or the publisher of the original publications; therefore entire journal issues or books, etc., cannot be downloaded, printed, or photocopied.

Luckily these resources can be legally distributed to students using persistent links. Persistent links provide an advantage over the standard copy-and-paste web browser links because they are stable and stay “persistent” over time. Sharing these hyperlinks to resources is not only permitted, but encouraged. 

You are usually allowed to:

• Search, view, retrieve, and display content for non-commercial personal, instructional, or academic research needs
• Save, print, or make copies of reasonable amounts or parts of the resources (such as individual Journal articles) for non-commercial personal use
• Share content with other current Seneca students, faculty, and staff
• Post links to specific content in such a way that it is available only to other authorized users

You are not usually allowed to:

• Sell or re-distribute content, or provide access to someone outside of the Seneca community, such as an employer
• Share content with people other than current Seneca students, faculty, and staff
• Post actual content or articles to Web sites or listservs, private (e.g., a corporate Intranet) or public
• Modify or alter the content of licensed resources in any way

To see the specific permitted uses of an online collection, check the product's "more..." page. These links are found below the database name and description on the library's Databases A-Z page.