Most of the collections listed in this guide are commercially produced digital collections owned or licensed by the University of Illinois. Students, faculty, and staff of the University may access these collections from any networked computer, whether on-campus or off-campus. Patrons not affiliated with the University may access the collections from a public workstation at the University Library.

With very few exceptions, the guide does not list any of the many freely available digital collections created by libraries, museums, and other public sector institutions.

The annotations on this guide are not written by librarians or staff at the University of Illinois. Most of the annotations are supplied by database vendors.