LibAnswers

The Library licenses content from publishers and database vendors. Our contracts with these vendors restrict how content may be used.  

Unless the terms and conditions state that you can use a vendor’s content with AI, you cannot use content from licensed Library e-resources in conjunction with AI technologies. Such usage cases may include but are not necessarily limited to:   

• Copy and pasting content into GenAI tools, like ChatGPT (manually entering content or uploading PDFs into such tools is also included) 

• Using content or data to train AI 

• Using an AI agent to crawl content (side note: many databases also do not let you use traditional software to crawl their content) 

If you’re not sure if an e-resource is licensed, consider if you needed to use your Fort Lewis credentials to access it. If yes, then it is considered a licensed product, and its use is covered by some sort of contract with the Library.  

To determine is an e-resource will allow you to use it in conjunction with AI, you should read through that resource’s terms of use. Key terms to keep an eye out for are: 

• Copyright 

• Intellectual Property 

• Open Access 

• Licenses 

If you’re still not sure if you can use a database with AI, it’s best to refrain from doing so.  

We do have access to a number of AI tools through our vendors, which you should feel more than comfortable using. These include EBSCO’s AI Insights which provides summarization of full-text articles from our EBSCO databases.