Terms of Service
The Union Catalog
NDLTD provides a Union Catalog of aggregated information related to publicly available metadata records for Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs). The records are obtained from third party services or websites which publish, host, and/or maintain the ETDs or indexes of ETDs published or hosted by others. You can use the Union Catalog to identify and locate ETDs that are relevant to your research or interests. We make the Catalog records available through a variety of tools including without limitation, an application programming interface ("API"), a web interface, among others that may be available.
The Union Catalog is compiled, updated, and amended using multiple data sources. NDLTD has invested and shall continue to invest substantial time and resources in selecting, verifying, obtaining, arranging, and compiling records incorporated into the Catalog, and in maintaining and updating the Catalog. The primary functionality of the Catalog allows users to search ETD metadata records, download related metadata, and locate publicly available ETDs from various third-party platforms.
Ownership and reliability
NDLTD does not have, and does not claim to have, any ownership rights to any publication referenced in the Catalog. NDLTD makes no representations regarding the ownership, license rights, reliability, accuracy, or completeness of any ETD referenced in the Catalog. NDLTD may not always be aware of any changes or restrictions imposed by external platforms or other third party owners or licensors of ETDs that could affect your rights to use certain metadata or ETDs referenced in the Catalog.
External platforms
Each user acknowledges and agrees that NDLTD has no control over any of the external platforms; and, NDLTD will have no liability whatsoever for the external platforms or any actions or inactions on the part of such third parties resulting in a user's inability to use the Union Catalog or any portion of the Catalog, any publication referenced in the Catalog, or any other information or materials related to any of the foregoing. Each user further acknowledges and agrees that NDLTD has no control over the reliability, accuracy, or completeness of any metadata records obtained from external platforms or other information made available on and/or obtained through an external platform or otherwise referenced or provided in connection with the Union Catalog.
Your responsibility for each record's rights
A record may carry a rights statement, for example a <rights> or
<dc:rights> element, relayed unchanged from its source repository. Before you copy,
redistribute, index, or otherwise reuse a record or any content it describes, such as an abstract, you are
responsible for reading and complying with the rights statement attached to that individual record. If you
reuse a record or an abstract in a way that violates its rights statement or the rights of any third party, you
are solely liable for that use, and NDLTD is not.
Acceptable use of the interfaces
NDLTD provides machine interfaces, including a search API and an OAI-PMH endpoint, for the discovery and harvesting of records. You may not use the Catalog in a manner that degrades its performance or availability, and you may not circumvent, disable, or interfere with any rate limit, access control, or other technical measure NDLTD applies. NDLTD may throttle, suspend, or block any access that abuses the service or violates these terms.
Indemnification
To the fullest extent permitted by law, you agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless NDLTD, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech), and their officers, employees, and agents from and against any third-party claim, demand, loss, damage, or expense, including reasonable attorneys' fees, arising out of your use of the Catalog or any record, including any reuse of an abstract or other content in violation of a third party's rights.
NDLTD general terms
NDLTD's general terms of use also apply and are available at https://ndltd.org/terms-of-use/.