We hope you are learning a lot during Fair Use Week and feeling empowered to create and innovate. Fair use is your right and works together with copyright law. The Association of Research Libraries Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Academic and Research Libraries (2012) points out that “without fair use and related exceptions, copyright would create an unconstitutional constraint on free expression” (p. 6). An important third factor is the contracts that Gleeson Library signs with vendors to provide electronic databases to you. Those contracts, or licenses, guide how you can use the database contents and, in general, take precedence over fair use guidelines.
Gleeson Library licenses or purchases databases because we think their content will help your research and support your education. We and the vendors want you to use the resources. Most databases explain how their content can be used. On their website, look for links like “Terms of Use” and “Support” or “Help.”
Navigating the rules for licensed content can sometimes be challenging. The examples below describe some typical situations. If you have questions, contact our Gleeson Library Copyright Specialists directly or Ask a Librarian from our website.
Best practices
Always cite your sources. (Like I did above.) Gleeson Library provides several resources on citation.
In course materials and elsewhere within the USF community, provide links to resources in Gleeson databases instead of sharing PDFs. This helps us comply with requirements to limit access to the USF community. It also enables Gleeson to track usage, thus informing us on which resources to keep or expand. Read Linking to Library Resources or watch the Gleeson video Using Permalinks in Fusion for more detail.
In other cases, share via citation. Encourage people from outside the USF community to use their own institution’s or public library’s databases.
The EBSCO Terms of Use are typical for ebook and ejournal databases. They say you can “download or print limited copies of citations, abstracts, full text or portions thereof” and reproduce and distribute those printouts “for internal or personal use.” Apart from these limitations, EBSCO “shall not restrict the use of the materials under the doctrine of “fair use” as defined under the laws of the United States.” They will even help you copy and cite content, as their eBooks User Guide explains.
Images
Databases like Artstor have millions of images collected from institutions around the world. They make their own agreements with those institutions to share the images with us.
The Artstor Permitted and Prohibited Uses page says that you can use those images in your scholarly papers and presentations. You can share an image in a Canvas course. The library recently used Artstor images in a display within the Gleeson Library building. In contrast, we cannot share those collected images in a “virtual display” on our website, although we could link to the collection on the Artstor platform. We cannot use an image to make a poster advertising an event.
If you read further on in their Terms of Use, you’ll see that Artstor’s parent organization, ITHAKA,
“encourages Authorized Users to engage in research activities…and use in accordance with the principles of fair use…except [emphasis added]…for Artstor Collection: Institutional Licensees and Authorized Users make such fair use, at their own sole risk…”
Additionally, they expressly prohibit “any adaptation or modification of, or derivative work of such Artstor Collection items, unless such activity is done for teaching or learning purposes in a classroom setting or coursework.”
If you would like to use an image in a non-scholarly work, take a look at the Gleeson guide Free Art, Design, and Museum Resources.
Data
Data is the product of another person’s or group’s work and thus requires the same attention as any other resource.
The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics Linking and Copyright Information page clearly states that “everything that we publish, both in hard copy and electronically, is in the public domain, except for previously copyrighted photographs and illustrations” and they ask only that you cite the source.
Additionally, they have specific language about the bureau’s logo. One Fair Use example is that you could write a paper about the design of the logo and include the emblem to illustrate your point. Another would be a chart that described several data sources and you used the emblem of each to help differentiate them. In contrast, you would not be allowed to put the emblem on a coffee mug and sell it as a Bureau of Labor Statistics souvenir.
Statista (USF log-in required) is one of the data resources Gleeson Library pays for. Their Terms and Conditions grant “right to use Materials for research purposes, and the right to implement Materials into analyses, presentations, documents, and other similar forms of work or research material.”
Thus, you could insert one of their charts into your presentation slides, properly cited, of course. Additionally, you can download the source data and combine it with data from other sources to conduct your own analysis, thus transforming it. (Again, properly cited.)
Find more sources of data, including the open data at data.gov, on the Gleeson Guide Statistics and Data.
Video
Gleeson’s streaming video collections are jam-packed with amazing films that can be viewed at home by USF students, faculty, and staff; shown in class; and linked or embedded in Canvas courses. It is generally not permissible to show streaming video from USF licensed collections to an audience outside of USF, even free of charge, without permission from the copyright owner.
For example, Proquest says about its collections like Black Studies in Video:
In the case of content that can potentially be publicly performed, Customer must secure permission from ProQuest’s Licensor and/or the copyright holder for any public performance other than reasonable classroom and educational uses.
Some free and open access video collections online, that anyone can view, are listed on our guide Videos and Streaming Media Collections.