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Digital UIC

Digital UIC provides students, faculty, and staff of UIC the opportunity to register a domain and create a digital scholarly presence. Users can easily install open source applications like Scalar or Omeka.

Digital UIC: Purpose and Restrictions

Digital UIC supports the following sites:

  • Digital scholarship and digital humanities projects
  • Digital exhibits
  • Course-related projects
  • Group and individual student projects
  • Student sites (e.g. creative portfolio websites, blogs, etc.)

The follow restrictions apply:

  • No official UIC unit websites, informational/marketing content, official courses sites for public viewing, faculty research/lab/institute sites, or UIC branded conferences and events. These types of sites are official UIC communications and should be hosted in RED. Visit https://red.uic.edu/ for more information.
  • No e-commerce
  • No publishing of student or sensitive data (i.e. grades, IRB research, etc.)

Please note that all publicly-facing websites that are used for teaching must adhere to UIC’s Accessibility Guidelines.

Roles and Responsibilities of UIC account holders

  • Account holders will be completely responsible for the content of their sites, including any customizations to HTML, CSS, and other design elements. Account holders are responsible for trouble shooting.   This includes for plug-ins or themes that you use.   You are also responsible for ensuring the functionality of your site, including when our host (Reclaim Hosting) does maintenance.  As a rule of thumb, we recommend using site tools that are up to date and compatible with the latest versions of PHP (8.0 and higher).
  • Account holders are responsible for ensuring their site content conforms to accessibility best practices.  Please see UIC Digital Accessibility Page for a list of accessibility resources (including workshops and webinars) and tools to test and comply with accessibility standards. 
  • Creation of sites may involve incorporation of original works of third parties (e.g., literature, photographs, music, software, film, and video works) that are covered by copyright laws.  Use of such works may be permitted by principles of fair use, consistent with copyright laws. Primary site owners/ authors and contributing users/authors will ensure that they have all appropriate licenses, releases, consent-to-publish forms, and/or assignments from all creators of the content to be published on the site(s), and shall be responsible for complying with all United States copyright laws and regulations 
  • Account holders are responsible for archiving their content or moving their account to the vendor or another service prior to the deletion of their account.   The library will not be responsible for archiving or migrating content. 
  • Account holders can choose to close their account at any time. Content will not be archived and will be deleted. 
  • Account holders understand that their account will be suspended if they take no action on a project within 3 months of receiving an account. 
  • Account holders shall indemnify and hold harmless the University and its affiliates (including, without limitation, its trustees, officers, faculty, staff, employees, consultants, agents and students) from and against any claims, losses, damages, or legal actions, including reasonable attorney’s fees, which University may sustain or become liable for on account of injury to or death of persons, or on account to damage to or destruction of tangible or intangible property resulting from the content, publication or other dissemination of the website, whether sounding in tort, contract, or other legal theory.  Account holder acknowledges and agrees that this duty to indemnify and hold harmless includes, but is not limited to, any actions sounding in copyright infringement or in defamation (including libel and/or slander).

Roles and Responsibilities of Assessment & Scholarly Communications

  • The University Library will offer basic support through documentation, webinars and workshops, and consultations. 
  • Visit Getting Started for advice on signing up for an account
  • Visit researchguides.uic.edu/digital-uic for examples of current UIC exhibits using this service 
  • The University Library will provide an overview on the type of platforms (Scalar vs Omeka vs WordPress) available through Digital UIC and offer guidance on the platform(s) that may be most suitable for the account holder’s project.  
  • The University Library will provide advice on crafting job descriptions for graduate student workers and freelance designers for users who want customized sites. 
  • The University Library will provide resources on copyright and fair use to help guide users on content creation. 
  • The University Library will offer to host decommissioned content from Digital UIC in INDIGO, if the account holder creates an archive of the content [and it is under 10 GB].  The account holder will be required to grant the University the non-exclusive right to reproduce, transmit, and the distribute the content and the right to reproduce the content to any medium for format necessary for the purposes of preservation or distribution.  
  • The University Library will suspend an account if no action occurs on a project within 3 months of account creation. This will allow for the reallocation of an unused account. 
  • The University Library reserves the right to remove any content that is determined to be in violation of UIC’s web policies (including violations of copyright law or other content that is contrary to law).

Ownership Rights

The account owner or author(s) shall retain all rights in the content of their project as outlined in the University of Illinois General Rules. 

Decommissioning of User Accounts

Faculty and Graduate & Undergraduate student will lose access to their Domain of One’s Own account when they are no longer affiliated with UIC (e.g. after graduation, end of employment).  

  • A reminder notice will be sent to the students in advance of their account being decommissioned.    
  • Once it is determined that a faculty member or graduate student is no longer at UIC, their account will be suspended for one year before deletion.    

Account holders will have the following options to migrate their content: 

  • Transfer their account to the vendor, Reclaim Hosting. Users do not need to migrate the content but will assume responsibility for paying hosting fees. 
  • Migrate to another hosting service. Users are responsible for migrating the content and will assume responsibility for any hosting fees.  

Termination of Service

The University Library will notify account holders three months prior to termination of this service, should the University Library decide to end the Service.

Monitoring

Although UIC does not routinely pre-screen, monitor, or regularly review content, it reserves the right to remove, at any time, at its sole discretion, any content that it considers to violate these Terms of Use or the terms of any other campus user agreements that may govern use of the campus networks, or that it deems in violation of University policy or local, state, or federal law. Should the University receive reports regarding a site on which it is felt that inappropriate content has been posted, UIC will investigate and contact the site’s primary owner to initially discuss the issue. In exceptional cases (including violations of copyright law or other content that is contrary to law), UIC may immediately remove the content, prior to contacting the site’s primary owner. Unacceptable content of this sort also may cause a site or account to be suspended, and in extreme cases, may result in disciplinary proceedings against the primary owner and/or contributing authors. Reports regarding inappropriate site content may be sent to digscholarship@uic.edu.