General regulations
By visiting the ULiège Library facilities, you commit to complying fully with these rules and regulations.
ULiège Library provides the university community, ARES member institutions and other users with important documentary resources, which are essential for teaching and carrying out university research and work. For this documentation to remain accessible to everyone, and for it to be consulted under the optimal conditions, a set of rules have hereby been established; if applicable, these rules and regulations shall be supplemented by guides that are intended for users at the various facilities.
The facilities are accessible:
1. Free of charge, as long as a valid student or staff card is shown, or, failing this, proof of this status, for:
- ULiège students (including students in ongoing education) and Erasmus or temporary students;
- scientific, academic and ATO staff members from ULiège (including the CARE and ULiège research centre staff);
- CHU staff members;
- ULiège scientific staff.
2. For any visitors other than those mentioned in point 1, for personal and educational use of the collections and services, free of charge, except for the payment of a one-time fee of €5, which is requested to cover the costs of issuing the library card.
3. For any visitors other than those mentioned in point 1, for professional use of the collections and services (legal professions, pharmaceutical firms, companies, etc.), after payment of an annual €50 fee.
For access to the library, the reader must be able to present their access card. For ULiège students, this means their student card for the current year. People who have not registered must immediately rectify their situation or leave the library. The access card is personal and non-transferable; it must be presented at the request of any staff member. If you lose your library card, you must report this at one of the ULiège Library facilities as soon as possible. If a card holder does not report this loss, they remain liable for any operations that are carried out with the card. In the event of loss, a sum of €5 will be requested for a new card to be issued.
Access to the facilities may be refused to any person whose behaviour causes a disturbance to the public and members of staff, or who refuses to comply with these rules and regulations.
During certain periods of the year (reading period, hand-in deadlines, etc.), certain ULiège Library facilities reserve the right to limit access to users who are not part of the ULiège university community. These limited periods shall be clearly indicated on posters displayed at the relevant facilities and on the ULiège Library website.
The type and number of documents that can be borrowed may vary depending on the category of the reader (ULiège staff, ULiège undergraduate, etc.).
Readers may find out the status of their loan(s) at any time by accessing their MyLibrary account and logging in with their ULiège user name and password, if they are members of the institution. If they are external visitors, they may use the user name and password that they were given when they registered.
For members of the ULiège community, the loan will be automatically renewed, unless the item has been reserved by another user, and within the authorized renewal period. For external users, the loan can be extended before the end of the borrowing period via the MyLibrary account. An extension can also be obtained at the reception desk of any ULiège Library facilities
If a borrowed book is reserved by another user, a message will be sent inviting the borrower to return it to the library as soon as it is no longer required. For very long loans (3 months), the return date may be reduced to one month from the date of the reminder.
Any delay automatically triggers reminders (sent via the e-mail address if provided and/or by post) and, for external users, the obligation to pay a late payment fee, starting at the earliest on the day following the scheduled return date of the borrowed document(s). The fee is €0.15 per document and per working day of delay. In addition, if a reader holds 3 items that have not been returned on time, or is liable for charges of €25 or more, his/her lending rights are immediately and automatically suspended at all locations, until all items have been returned and charges paid.
After 30 calendar days' delay, measures will be taken to recover borrowed items as quickly as possible: for ULiège students and non-LUiège students, the user's right to borrow items is suspended at all locations. This suspension is lifted only when any late payment due has been paid and the document returned. For all users, if the document cannot be returned, it will be replaced. In addition to the above-mentioned compensation for delay, the purchase price of the new work (if it is still available) or its new edition/its value on the second-hand market (if it is out of print) will be added. In the absence of any other information, the flat-rate value of books is 30 euros.
In the event of non-return of a book borrowed by a user from another ARES member institution, ULiège Library may notify the institution to which the user belongs. The latter undertakes to do everything in its power to recover the book or, failing that, to pay fair compensation for the loss suffered. As a last resort, the institution may itself compensate ULiège Library. Conversely, ULiège has made the same commitment to other ARES member institutions.
It is officially prohibited to leave a facility with publications that have not been borrowed. Any attempt to leave a facilities with a publication that has not been borrowed (i.e. going through the anti-theft barrier, walking past the loan counter without registering the document) shall be considered as attempted theft and result in the following penalties:
- Payment of a lump-sum fee of €25 per publication, in addition to the price of replacing the relevant document(s), should they not have been retrieved.
- The file shall be sent to the University’s Legal Affairs Department to be handled.
We would like to draw the reader’s attention to the fact that the details shall be recorded on their user account.
When a reader wants a document that is not part of the ULiège Library collections, they may request a copy or to borrow it from other Belgian or international libraries via our Inter-library loan service. The fees applied for this service are applicable once the document is received by the library.
Open-access photocopiers are available to readers; to use them, one must purchase a magnetic card. Cards are generally only valid in the facility where they were acquired. High-definition digitisation of fragile documents that cannot be photocopied may be obtained at the reader’s expense; in this case, the reader must contact the ULiège Library staff. Scanners are available in most of the large reading rooms and on facilities that house maps, plans and photographs.
Members of ULiège/CHU staff, ULiège master’s students and ULiège doctoral candidates have the option of ordering a digital copy of an article or a chapter of a publication from the ULiège Library collections free of charge. Documents that can be processed via this service are indicated by a ‘Digitisation’ link when the reader is logged in. The number of simultaneous requests (those pending processing) is limited to three for students and 20 for members of staff. For ULiège master’s students and doctoral candidates, the total number of requests is limited to 20 per academic year and the number of pages per request is capped at 40. If this is exceeded, requests for partial digitisation shall be converted into requests for physical documents and the copies shall be sent to the facility that is deemed to be most appropriate for the requester.
The consultation of databases and other paid electronic resources is solely reserved for registered readers (except where there are specific contractual conditions), and only for the purposes of teaching or research. Any commercial use, or use for the purposes of resale to third parties, shall result in exclusion from ULiège Library. If applicable, ULiège Library also reserves the right to forward the file to the Legal Affairs Department to be handled. Except where restrictions are contractually imposed by publishers, all registered readers may access electronic resources (i) from computers made available to users on the facilities and (ii) after logging in via the secure Wi-Fi network on the various ULiège campuses. For members of the university community, access is also possible remotely for most resources, via the off-campus access.
Any person who visits ULiège Library facilities commits to respect the sites, equipment and collections, as well as the work of other readers and the staff. In particular, this means:
- Courtesy must be shown towards other readers, as well as towards the staff.
- When lockers are provided and available to ensure the security of personal belongings, bags, briefcases and laptop cases etc. are prohibited on the facilities; if these facilities are unavailable, it may be required that bags and coats be left at the entrance to the facilities. ULiège Library bears no liability in the event of loss, theft or damage to readers’ personal belongings.
- Silence must be observed in the reading rooms, except group study rooms, where these exist. No mobile phones, personal stereos or any other source of noise may be used on ULiège Library facilities; using personal laptops for entertainment purposes (watching loud videos, etc.) is also prohibited.
- As computer equipment is made available to readers for documentary-research purposes, it is strictly prohibited (i) to use this equipment to play games or for other non-scientific, personal use or (ii) to change its configuration.
- The cleanliness of all facilities must be maintained. In our heritage rooms (Marie Delcourt room and heritage consultation room), all food and drink are prohibited. In our other facilities, only snacks and drinks in closed containers are permitted. Smoking (including electronic cigarettes) is not permitted on our facilities. Animals are not allowed. The equipment, especially computer equipment, and the premises may not be damaged.
- The condition and integrity of publications and periodicals must be maintained. No annotations or especially damage shall be tolerated. Any document that is annotated or underlined (even with pencil) by a reader shall be considered damaged and must be replaced. Readers cannot repair documents that they have damaged themselves. Any document that is lost, damaged or not returned to the libraries must be paid for, at the price of the new document if it is still available, or at its value on the second-hand market if it is out of print, along with any late fees.
- Unless otherwise stated, the reader must not put back publications they have used at open-access facilities, but leave them in the specified places, or, if it is unavoidable, leave them on the tables. It is absolutely forbidden to change the order of the documents on the shelves for any reason whatsoever.
- Authorisation may be required to consult old or special documents and this must be done in accordance with the instructions for handling that the staff provides.
- Readers commit to complying with current copyright law and, in particular, not to photocopy or scan a publication in its entirety or to distribute any copies made in this way via the Internet. ULiège Library bears no liability for any infringement in this respect.
The behaviour of users who infringe these rules and regulations shall be immediately reported to the manager of the relevant facility. The latter shall hear the relevant party and, depending on the severity of the misdemeanour, shall decide whether there is cause to refer it to the Director of ULiège Library and then the Chancellor of the University. The staff may also ask any person disturbing the necessary peace on the facility to leave. If applicable, this ban on access may take effect immediately.
Should an external user who belongs to an ARES member institution behave inappropriately, they may be banned from accessing the ULiège Library collections and services. ULiège Library reserves the right to inform the institution to which the external user who is causing the problem belongs. It commits to taking the necessary disciplinary measures and informing the host institution. Conversely, ULiège has made the same commitment towards the other ARES member institutions.
Furthermore, acts of vandalism or theft shall result in a police complaint and, for students, the events shall be reported to the academic authorities they are governed by, or the head of the institution if they are students from outside the University.
For more information about privacy-protection measures, please read the legal notice.
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