Licencing and Copyright

The documents are set out in a hierarchical manner.

Note that the parties to these agreements differ even though the structure and objectives are consistent; persons, groups and communities are encouraged to produce materials for retention in the repository and academic personnel are licensed to use material through their Institutions for academic use only. Responsibility for rights clearances and other legal obligations rest with individuals and their Institutions and not with HEA/NDLR.

1. The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) operates at the level of groups or communities who need a framework agreement to facilitate cooperation. This agreement does not require Institutional signatures and the HEA/NDLR is not a party thereto.

Memorandum of Understanding

2. The Individual Depositor Licence and Sub-Licence Agreement allow an individual, a group or community to deposit materials in the Repository and it grants HEA/NDLR a right to sub-licence use of the materials. Unlike the MoU, HEA/NDLR is a party to this agreement but, again like the MoU, Institutions are not a party to this agreement. Both the MoU and this Licence are intended to be used together in the short term to facilitate local level, non-Institutional arrangements which will be replaced by the next two documents.

Individual (Depositor Licence and Sub-Licence) Agreement
Individual (Depositor Licence and Sub-Licence) Agreement Schedule

3. The HEA/NDLR Deposit Licence and sub-Licence Agreement operates between HEA/NDLR, on the one hand, and between Irish educational establishments on the other. Other establishments (eg. UK colleges) could be added by a decision of HEA in the future. The employees of Irish Educational Institutions are empowered to deposit materials in the Repository and HEA/NDLR in turn are allowed to sub-licence educational use by academic users. A feature of the HEA/NDLR Repository model is that depositors (unlike Creative Commons licences) do not transfer or lose Intellectual property rights by putting materials in the Repository.

HEA / NDLR (Deposit Licence and Sub-Licence) Agreement
HEA / NDLR (Deposit Licence and Sub-Licence) Agreement Schedule

4. The HEA/NDLR Institutional Licence agreement regulates what Institutions and Institutional users can do and makes it clear that Institutions and Institutional users together are legally responsible for matters such as rights clearance, and other content issues, as HEA/NDLR do not direct or edit what is in the materials.

HEA / NDLR Institutional User Agreement

5. Finally, the Terms and Conditions (T&C's) are the interface between depositors, end users and the Repository. As a click wrap contract these T&C's set out rights and obligations of both parties, in particular the duty under law upon the operators of the Repository to disable access in an expeditious manner to problematical materials (copyright, defamation, etc).

NDLR User Terms and Conditions