Digital library materials may only be used in accordance with specific terms of use. This article explains the rules you need to follow.

WUR Library has signed license agreements for digital library resources, databases, software, and digital media. Access to this electronic information is subject to terms of use.

The general terms of use are:

• Access to licensed materials is restricted to WUR staff, students, and (guest) visitors of the Forum Library.
• You may only use licensed material for scientific, educational, or personal purposes. Commercial use is not permitted.
• Downloading, printing, or saving licensed material for personal use is allowed. Systematically downloading, printing, or saving large parts of licensed material is not permitted.
• Distribution of licensed material is forbidden (unless the license of the individual materials allows distribution).
• Access to library resources is generally arranged through network access, meaning workstations registered within the WUR IP domains. For access to some library resources, you must also register personally with your WUR account.
• Violation of these conditions may result in denial of access to electronic materials from publishers and information providers, not only for individual users but potentially for all WUR users.

Personal use 

You may only download, print, or save licensed material for personal use. You may not (systematically) download, print, or save substantial parts of this digital material. You are personally responsible for ensuring that the digital material is used only for personal purposes. Commercial use of the material or making the material available to others in any form or by any means is not permitted.

Text & Data Mining

Data mining refers to the use of computer techniques to extract patterns and insights from structured datasets. Text mining focuses on analysing unstructured information, such as free text, to derive knowledge from it. Because these methods are closely connected, the collective term text & data mining (TDM) is often used. In research, TDM techniques are increasingly applied to analyse large quantities of publications, including journal articles, books, and conference proceedings.

TDM and other forms of computational analysis of licensed resources are usually permitted, but only:

• for non-commercial education and academic research;
• when carried out by authorised WUR users;
• using copies of content that are needed for verification or future research and are stored safely.

The results of analyses (such as statistics, models, and conclusions) may generally be shared or published, provided they do not contain identifiable or original source material.

NB: In almost all licences, the use of licensed content for training or fine-tuning AI or large language models (LLMs) is not permitted. Structural reuse, such as building local databases or corpora, is also generally outside the scope of the Library licence.

What is allowed?

Under most WUR licences, the following is permitted:

• Text and Data Mining (TDM) and computational analysis for education and research.
• Downloading and copying of (parts of) publications to enable analysis, only for verification purposes and stored safely.
• Sharing and publishing analysis results, as long as these do not contain substantial parts of the source material.
• Limited use of short excerpts for illustration in scientific publications or education.
• Use through personal devices or the WUR network by authorised users.

What is not allowed?

In most cases, the following is not permitted:

• Building local collections or corpora.
• Commercial use or use in collaboration with commercial parties.
• Systematic or automated downloading, crawling, or harvesting of content.
• Programmatic access to full text (for example, via APIs or scraping), unless this is explicitly permitted.
• Use outside education and academic research, such as for policy, consultancy, or services.

Training AI (LLM) tools

Using licensed content for training, fine-tuning, or structural deployment of (local) AI or LLM models is not permitted.  It is also not allowed to upload content from library-licensed resources to, or copy and paste such content into, generative AI tools (such as ChatGPT or Claude).

Always contact the library to check whether you are allowed to use a specific library resource in an AI tool.

Questions and contact

Do you have questions about the terms of use for a specific resource, or would you like personal support? Feel free to contact us. You can send an email to collections.library@wur.nl.