[WEB4LIB] Re: Forcing a click-thru legal agreement (no robots,

[Chris Gray]

The issue is with legitimate patrons using a robot to harvest eJournal
articles wholesale.  We have encountered this problem and in some cases it
has been severe enough for a vendor to block temporarily all access
coming from one of our networks.  In all cases, we have been able
to correct the problem by explaining to people that this behavior violates
our license agreement with the vendor.  So from our experience it seems
that raising patron awareness of licensing issues is the way to go.

Chris Gray
Library Systems
University of Waterloo

On Tue, 30 Nov 2004, Ryan Eby wrote:

> I agree that I don't think it requires a click-thru. I don't think
> many users read agreements and it has the potential of frustrating
> people that just want to use the resource in a legitimate way. I can
> see the point if you need a legal document or something so you have a
> method of recourse. For normal users I think a small box near the top
> or the search box (or on the download page, etc.) that says "By using
> this resource you agree not to....). By being front and center it
> should raise awareness while not becoming a large barrier for people
> using it in a normal matter.
>
> You may also look as making a robots.txt file on your web server (if
> it is hosted on it) that will help prevent legitimate robots from
> crawling the database. For robots that don't follow the rules you may
> need to ban IPs, etc. if they become a large problem (hammering the
> server, etc.). I don't really know how bad your problem is so I can't
> really say more than that. Here's a tutorial on writing a robots.txt
> file:
>
> http://www.searchengineworld.com/robots/robots_tutorial.htm
>
> Ryan Eby
>
> On Tue, 30 Nov 2004 15:13:41 -0800 (PST), Genny Engel
> <gengel at sonoma.lib.ca.us> wrote:
> > Actually, I have spent my time since starting here attempting to REDUCE
> > the number of clicks required to get from our home page to actual
> > information.  Luckily none of our database vendors has ever brought up
> > this issue and I hope they never do.  Since all our vendor databases
> > require a library card number to be entered into a form, most robots
> > wouldn't get into the databases, unless they were specifically crafted
> > to use a stolen library card number.
> >
> > Are you looking into this because you have actual evidence of robots
> > harvesting the databases?  Or just as a CYA?  I would have thought if
> > the vendors were actually getting twitchy about this issue, they would
> > have started putting up these click-through pages on the databases
> > themselves.
> >
> > Genny Engel
> > Internet Librarian
> > Sonoma County Library
> > gengel at sonoma.lib.ca.us
> > 707 545-0831 x581
> >
>