There is no fee to use information from IDEALS. Except those items which have been restricted by their depositors, all items in IDEALS are available openly to anyone with internet access.

Most items in IDEALS are under copyright. Often the copyright holder is noted in the Copyright and License Information field of the metadata (item description). If an item is in the public domain, that is likely to be noted in that space as well. If the copyright owner is not stated, the author(s) or publisher is likely to be the copyright owner.

If an item is under copyright, some uses are legal under fair use doctrine. The Copyright Reference Library Guide provides an introduction to fair use. Many academic uses qualify as fair use.

Some items in IDEALS may be under a Creative Commons license that explicitly allows specific uses of the content. This information should be in the Rights Information section of the item description or in the item itself.

If an item’s copyright belongs to the University of Illinois, it is managed by the Office of Technology Management.