Learn how to use the new academic search tool, Omni.

How to Check Licences of Library Electronic Resources

Electronic Resources at Toronto Metropolitan University are licenced by TMU Libraries. The most common types of course readings that we deliver to students at TMU are:

  • Articles from E-journals
  • Chapters from E-books

Many resources allow redistribution of this material through a persistent or stable link that can be included in your D2L course.  Occasionally the licence terms may also allow you to post a PDF article or book section to your D2L shell.   To determine how you can use these resources in your D2L course, you will need to check what our licences allow you to do before you post the material.

Guidelines for the Use of Electronic Resources

Generally Allowed

  • Using persistent links to provide access to journal articles and e-books from within D2L. These links can be associated with your D2L shell by library staff using the Library Ereserves Service via Ares.
  • Incorporating images taken from the resources into presentations projected in the classroom.
  • Giving students citations for materials so they can locate it
in the library.
  • E-mailing a link to an article to an individual student or class.

Generally Not Allowed

  • Posting digital copies (for example, PDF copies) of journal articles and e-books into your D2L course
  • Using images from the resources in presentations uploaded to D2L, or posting images directly to D2L
  • Printing and handing out journal articles in the classroom.
  • E-mailing an article to an individual student or class.
If you are unsure about what you can 
do with a particular resource, check the Terms of Use of the resource.

Articles from Journals

The Omni Search tool contains information that indicates how you can use articles from a particular journal.  It will tell you if you can post a pdf in your course shell or if you need to use a persistent link.  Check the License Look-up Tutorial to learn how to search Omni to find out how you can deliver electronic journal resources to your students.

Things to note:

  • Some journals only allow you to redistribute material through a persistent or stable link. (Link is Green in the Look-up Tool)
  • Occasionally the licence terms allow you to post a PDF of an article to your D2L shell. (CMS is Green in the Look-up Tool)
  • A few e-journals do not allow any redistribution of classroom use from their journal database.  (Link is marked Red in the Look-up Tool). For these, you can contact Library E-reserves for copyright checking.

E-Books

Some e-books in the TMU Library collection can be freely linked to if you would like to use an e-book for teaching purposes. You can provide the student the “Permanent Link” of the ebooks which is clearly marked in the Omni record. Many vendors allow links to their books for teaching purposes and allow multiple students to access the resource, but in some cases we can only get licences for e-books that allow for limited concurrent access. Books may have notices on them that unlimited access is allowed but some may indicate that only 1-3 students can access at a time, so are not available for all students in your class to access at once.

Please check the A-Z Database list for e-book packages that are available. Clicking the i icon in the record will link you to licensing information about the e-book collection. The record should indicate the allowable “Number of simultaneous users” of the collection, if it says Unlimited” it is from an e-book collection suitable for for full classroom access. Some e-book collections when indicating the allowable “Number of simultaneous users” of the collection may use the term “Varies” – this means that you will need to check individual ebook for their stated licensing terms. Please contact your Subject Librarian who can check if an e-book licence upgrade is possible if the e-book title indicates you have limited access.

E-book collections that allow Unlimited Access include:

AccessMedicine

ACLS Humanities E-Book

Black Short Fiction and Folklore

Bloomsbury Fashion Central

Brill Human Rights and Humanitarian Law eBooks

Caribbean Literature

JAMAevidence

Elgaronline

IET (Institution of Engineering and Technology) eBooks

Knovel

O’Reilly for Higher Education

PsycBOOKS (APA PsycNET)

Scholars Portal eBooks

ScienceDirect ebooks