Copyright at College of the Rockies for Faculty & Staff

A majority of our licensed databases do not allow the inclusion of their articles in print course packs, search the Permissions on the Library's  A-Z Database list.
As a result, if you want to give access to these articles to your students, you need to provide them with persistent links.  The use of our licensed databases is restricted to students, faculty and staff of College of the Rockies. If a printed copy of an article from a licensed database were included in a course pack, then copies of that article could be made by unauthorized persons. By just linking to the database, you are taking the necessary security measures to ensure that only authorized users can access this copyrighted material and you are less likely to be violating licence agreements.

Another advantage to linking to articles within databases is that students become familiar with these research databases and how they work. The more comfortable students become with electronic indexes and databases, the more efficient and effective they will be at using them.

Have you ever copied a link from the library's databases only to find that once you have navigated away from the page, it no longer works? That is because, when you are searching a database, session-based or temporary links are created. Therefore it is important, when you are linking to articles in the library databases or records in the library catalogue, you use the persistent link.

What is the difference between a persistent link, permalink, stable URL or DOI? Essentially these terms are referring to the same thing. The terminology differs between databases. They can also be referred to as durable or permanent links, PURL (persistent universal resources locators) or Jumpstart. DOI or Digital Object Identifier, is a permanent address given for intellectual property, such as electronic journal articles. These are the most reliable of all persistent or permanent links as they do not change over time.