Copyright law protects creative expression as soon as it is saved or fixed, but this protection can be transferred and modified by contract law. Creative Commons licenses are a great example of how, through a contract or a license, a copyright owner can give up some of the rights that copyright law guarantees them.
Contracts can also provide guidance or put restrictions on how copyright protected material can be used. Library database and vendor contracts or license agreements establish rules for how the Libraries and its users may access content held by the vendor in exchange for a subscription fee to that content. Most of the terms or allowed uses across the various databases, publishers, and platforms to which the USF Libraries subscribe are similar and summarized in our Library Resources User Terms.
The authentication systems at USF enables you to seamlessly interact with our Libraries’ subscribed content as you search the internet for a research topic. A search on Google Scholar, for example, will bring up citations from professional associations, conferences, open access (OA) journals, library digital collections, and other scholarly publications. Some of the materials are freely accessible on the internet and some are accessible to you if you have logged into USF systems. By being a USF employee or student, your log in grants you access to the content the USF Libraries have subscribed to.
USING LIBRARY COLLECTIONS ON TDM AND AI PROJECTS
USF Libraries’ subscription collections vary in how they allow access to their content for text and data mining projects or projects where AI is used to analyze or train on collections. Before launching into a project where large amounts of data or text will be scraped or downloaded from a collection, check the terms and conditions to make sure this activity is not a breach of the Libraries’ contract.
The Text and Data Mining guide provides information on several of the Libraries’ subscription resources. It and the API Portal: Open and Licensed Data Resources can connect researchers with approved methods to access subscription content. If the resource you are interested in is not on either guide, please reach out to your liaison or copyright librarian.