E-resources: terms of use and remote access

Terms of use

As a holder of a user account for University of Helsinki network you have the right to use the electronic publications acquired by the Helsinki University Library, as well as the responsibility to comply with the terms of use as described in the licensing agreements. Breach of the terms of use may result in access being blocked for the entire University of Helsinki community.

You may

  • browse and search the material
  • copy, print or save search results and individual articles in reasonable amounts for your personal use in study, teaching or research
  • share individual articles with a third party for purposes of scientific research and communication
  • incorporate links to e-resources in electronic course materials used in teaching at the University of Helsinki

You may not

  • use the material or parts thereof for commercial purposes
  • distribute, sell or modify the material or make derivative works of it
  • systematically download material by robots or other automatic processes

Log out of the e-book or database if you don’t need it anymore. Sometimes e-resources have licenses that allow only a limited number of users at a time.

Remote access to e-materials  

You can use the Helsinki University Library books, articles and journals remotely via Helka with your University of Helsinki username. When you have found the material you want, click on the link to the material in Helka.   

If a window opens requesting you to log in to the University of Helsinki, enter your username and password to access the material.  

You may find a book or article in the collections of the Helsinki University Library elsewhere online, but the material may not open without authentication with the university user account.   

In Helka, you can also remotely access databases acquired by the library, such as Scopus and Web of Science.   

Alternatively, you can remotely access the Helsinki University Library data using a VPN connection.

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Watch a video of the remote use of Helsinki University Library materials. Duration of video 4 min 8 sec. The video is in Finnish, but you can switch on English subtitles in the settings at the bottom.

3.4 Remote use of materials – text equivalent (.docx)

Read more:
Instructions on installing and using VPN software (IT Center website)
More detailed instructions for remote use of the library’s e-resources (Helsinki University Library website)