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Responsible Electronic Resource Use

Access to the electronic resources listed on the Libraries’ website and catalog is restricted to current students, staff, and faculty for the purposes of research, teaching, and private study.

Persistent Links

Pause before doing any scanning or copying of any resource, whether it has been obtained from the Libraries’ licensed electronic resources or not. When faculty and instructors are using content from licensed electronic resources, they should use persistent links instead of creating and uploading copies of materials. A persistent link (also called a permalink or stable link)  

  • is a durable URL that links directly to an electronic resource such journal articles, book chapters, images, tables, figures, etc.  
  • remains consistent and does not change over time.  
  • does not require obtaining permission.  
  • allows authenticated users to access licensed resources for reading or printing for personal use.  

Students should be informed that in order to access a link to a subscription-only resource, they will need to connect to the WUSTL network via WUSTL Key or use other remote means of connecting to the WUSTL network such as proxy or VPN.