Authorized Use

The “Authorized Use” section of the license is in many ways the heart of the license—it covers what library patrons are allowed to do with the licensed content. Because of this, provisions in this section can (and frequently should) be highly negotiated. Generally speaking, you want this section to allow your library users to do whatever it is they need to do in their educational and research pursuits. They need to be able to read the content; cite, quote, and build off of it in their own publications; share it with colleagues or a class; and use it with new computational tools or use it to build their own new tools. Recognize your users’ inventive utilization of library resources and don’t underestimate their creativity in meeting future needs. The last thing you want to create are unnecessary barriers to unanticipated new uses, so it is a good idea to also build flexibility into your authorized uses.

There is also an aspect of risk management to negotiating the authorized use clauses—it is very difficult to realistically communicate detailed authorized uses and restrictions to all of your library patrons. With the thousands of authorized users typical of an academic institution and unmediated access to library resources, that kind of communication is just not going to happen. It’s important, therefore, that the authorized use definition matches the norms and expectations of your users—users will typically assume that, if they have access to something, they can quote it in a research article, for example. By making sure that the authorized uses clauses match a standard set of use rights and user expectations, you limit both the chance of heartache and trouble for the user (when they learn that the thing they’ve been working on for months must either incur new licensing costs or be dismantled) and liability for the institution (for potential breach of contract over uses that exceed the scope of the license).

This section will cover typical features of standard authorized use clauses.