Collection Development Policy on Resources for Personal Use

The Yale Library purchases information resources in support of the university’s mission. In keeping with proper financial stewardship and the ethos of providing broad access to the resources we acquire, we do not use collection funds to purchase resources intended for personal use by a specific individual, such as consumable print items (e.g., workbooks) or electronic resources with a single-user license, meaning a license for a single, named person (not to be confused with single simultaneous user or a single-seat license which means one-user at a time).

Whereas institutional resources may be made available campus-wide and delivered through online catalogs and discovery systems per the supplier’s license, electronic resources for personal use are governed by licenses which are often linked to an individual’s account or credentials, and typically cannot be widely shared per supplier terms and conditions. Often a supplier will provide multiple options for licensing, but if licensing permits only a single user or limits the number of users to fewer than anticipated need, the library will not provide that material. E-books, e-journals, data, software, and other types of electronic resources may be sold exclusively under the single-user model per the supplier’s discretion and cannot be licensed by the library.

Approved by the Collection Steering Committee, April 2022