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Interlibrary Loan: Copyright Information

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Copyright is the Law!

Title 17 of the United States Code governs the Copyright Law of the United States. Several aspects of the law apply to Interlibrary Loan and define what libraries and library users can do when it comes to creating, receiving, and using copies of articles, book chapters, and other items.

What this means for ILL users:
1) The library is restricted in how many chapters or articles we can request for you.

In most cases, we can only ask for a scan of one chapter of a single book or one article from a single issue of a journal. In some cases, we can pay copyright royalties in order to get additional articles from the same issue of a journal. In these cases, we might ask you to share the cost with us. We will always give you the option to cancel the request(s) instead of paying copyright fees.

2) The library pays copyright fees for many article requests.

Once we've requested a certain number of articles from a journal in a single calendar year, we are required to pay royalties to the publisher in order to borrow additional articles. The library covers the majority of these fees, but we may ask you to share the cost in certain situations. We will always ask your permission before agreeing to fees you would be required to pay.

3) ILL articles are for personal use only.

The copyright law states that ILL articles are exclusively to be used for "private study, scholarship, or research". [17 USC S.108 (d)(1)]. In order to be in compliance with the law, articles received through Interlibrary Loan must not be shared with other users nor be posted online or placed on reserve or as part of a course pack or reading list.