Negotiators of Licenses for Campus Databases and Other E-resources
Rod Library negotiates licenses for most of its online databases, ejournals, and ebooks. Students may directly access the full text or full content of an article or book by going through licensed databases. Off-campus students have to log into the restricted database before they
can access the full text or full content. UNI distance faculty can direct students to full text information in licensed databases without having to obtain copyright permission.

Library Reserve Services
Rod Library offers print and electronic reserve service where faculty members can place books and articles on reserve for use by their students. The library uses the fair use portion of the copyright law when placing items that don't have copyright permission on reserve. This
usually means that limited amounts of information may be placed on reserve for limited amounts of time. Students access electronic copies through the library's online catalog (UNISTAR). Students can view the full content of images that have been placed on electronic reserve after first logging into the reserve system. Links to many full text database items can be placed in the electronic reserve system without using fair use and without violating copyright law.

Library Interlibrary Loan Services
Rod Library offers an interlibrary loan service where books and articles that are not owned by the library are obtained from other libraries. UNI distance learners should request all interlibrary loan items through Rod Library’s distance education web pages since the items are sent to
distance students once the library receives them. Articles are often copied and sent to the Rod Library (subject to the fair use portion of U.S. copyright law). If the specific article does not fall within the library's interpretation of copyright law, the library will attempt to purchase the item from a document delivery company. In this case, copyright royalties are paid to the legal copyright owner and fair use is not used.

Fair Use Provisions of the U.S. Copyright Law
If digitization and dissemination of certain information is not covered by the TEACH Act, faculty members may sometimes use the fair use provisions of the copyright law to use portions of copyrighted material in their classes. Fair use allows for the legal copying, digitalization
and dissemination of limited amounts of material if no copyright permission has been obtained.

The U.S. copyright law is open to interpretation and there is no absolute "safe" amount of material that can be copied and disseminated. Each case or situation stands alone where the four fair use factors (purpose, nature, amount, and effect) must be weighed together to determine if the use of a copyrighted work is fair use or whether copyright law has been violated.