This is the author's PDF version of an article published in Sconul Focus ©2009. It is available online at http://www.sconul.ac.uk/publications/newsletter/47/17.pdfThis article discusses the implementation and operation of the CLA scanning licence at the University of Chester library

Peters, Lisa

English

ChesterRep

       This work has been submitted to ChesterRep – the University of Chester’s online research repository  http://chesterrep.openrepository.com    Author(s): Peters, Lisa    Title: Using the CLA scanning licence to offer 24x7 access to in-demand book chapters and journal articles at the University of Chester   Date: 2009   Originally published in: Sconul Focus   Example citation: Peters, L. (2009). Using the CLA scanning licence to offer 24x7 access to in-demand book chapters and journal articles at the University of Chester. Sconul Focus, 47, 52-55    Version of item: Author’s post-print     Available at: http://hdl.handle.net/10034/12675 Using the CLA scanning licence to offer 24/7 access to in-demand book chapters and journal articles at the University of Chester  Lisa Peters Subject Librarian for Law / CLA Licence Co-ordinator University of Chester  Parkgate Road Chester College  CH1 4BJ l.peters@chester.ac.uk  In 2005, the Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA) introduced a combined photocopying and scanning licence for higher education institutions. This licence allowed higher education institutions to scan one chapter per book / one article per journal issue or 5% of a book or journal issue published in the UK (with exceptions) and make it available to a defined cohort of students on a particular module via the higher education institution’s virtual learning environment (VLE). The University of Chester signed this new licence and in January 2006 Lisa Peters took over responsibility for implementing and promoting the licence.  Why use the licence? Like many libraries, the University of Chester library is under pressure to deliver core materials on readings lists to an increasing number of students. Unfortunately the library cannot afford to purchase large numbers of core textbooks so it was felt that the licence would help to alleviate demands for these popular titles. The availability of scans 24/7 to all students, including distance learners, was an attractive factor. Finally, operating such a service would, if successful, raise the library’s profile amongst academics and students.  Implementing the licence Almost immediately, the decision was taken to centralise the operation in the library. All that lecturers were asked to do was to tell their subject librarian what they wanted scanned and for which module. It was felt that this approach would encourage lecturers to use the licence as their required input was minimal. In addition, as subject teams were scanning and adding the scans they could ensure that the licence conditions were consistently adhered to. The process is:  • Lecturer makes request to subject librarian • Subject librarian completes scanning request form and collects book / journal from shelves • Book / Journal and completed form passed to licence co-ordinator  • Licence co-ordinator does the scan and adds the coversheet • Scan added to module space by subject librarian      Collection of book chapters scanned for a module  on the VLE    • Information taken from request form used to complete CLA spreadsheet.   As the university library operates across two main sites and three hospital sites, slightly different systems operate at each site. At the Warrington campus, four assistant subject librarians can receive requests from lecturers at Warrington and scan the book, and add the coversheet and the scan to the VLE. Requests from lecturers in Faculty of Health & Social Care are co-ordinated at one of the hospital sites. In total, eight members of library staff are designated as “authorised persons” under the licence who can authorise scans to be made. The process usually takes between two and four days, depending on demand, but urgent requests are usually completed within a day.  As the modules on the university’s VLE are accessible to all staff and students, a notice is attached to each scan stating that it should only be accessed by staff and students on the module in order to comply with the licence conditions. Once added to the VLE, each scan is timed to be ‘live’ and accessible until 31 August. During the summer, subject teams contact module leaders to see if the module will be running in the next academic year. If so, the scan is timed to be ‘live’ for another year. If the module is not running, the scan will be inaccessible after 31 August and will later be deleted.   Notice    Equipment Scans were initially created on the flat-bed desktop scanner used in the library. It was soon realised that this was insufficient, so a book scanner (OpticBook 3600) was purchased, initially for the Chester campus. The scanner is kept in the library office and is only used for CLA licence scanning. Additional scanners were purchased for the sites and an extra scanner for the Chester campus. The scanners are robust and inexpensive – the only difficulties have been that they are too small for some of the art books!  Promotion Initially the subject librarians were asked to promote the licence via departmental meetings and follow-up e-mails. The aim was to get across the simple message of one book chapter / one journal article from UK published books or journals per module. There were exceptions to this message, such as publishers who had opted out of the licence, but it was hoped that by getting the core message out to lecturers there would be few difficulties. A notice was placed on the intranet with a link to further information on the copyright page. When US publishers joined the scheme in 2008, a flyer advertising the change was sent to all academics. Word of mouth has been a useful publicity tool.    Flyer    Statistics        The number of scans created under the licence has increased every year. However, take-up is not consistent across departments. Requests have tended to come from health & social care, law, criminology, counselling, media, theology & religious studies, education, and business & management. There have been only a few requests from the creative arts, maths, and computer science.  An analysis of usage of scans was carried out across a number of modules in summer 2007. It was pleasing to learn that the vast majority of scans had been accessed by students. Subject librarians have received very positive feedback from both academics and students – students like the fact that they can access scans at home anytime and academics appreciate that they can make certain readings available to all students on a module without concerning themselves with library book availability. Year Number of scans 2005-06 106 2006-07 996 2007-08 1804 2008-09 (approx.) 2600     Difficulties 1. The main difficulty has been the significant extra workload caused by operating the scheme centrally with everything, bar selecting what is to be scanned, performed by the library. This has meant that the majority of the scanning and adding of coversheets has been done by the licence co-ordinator. The licence requires the licence co-ordinator to submit a spreadsheet detailing certain information about every scan (module, number of students on module, ISBN, pages scanned, title, author) – the more scans, the more information needs to be added into the spreadsheet and the longer it takes to complete.  2. Demand has always been particularly high at the end of the summer vacation when lecturers start contacting their subject librarian with their requests.   3. The quick turnaround on scanning requests has created an expectation of speedy results that is increasingly difficult to meet as more and more requests are made.   4. Some lecturers believe that because the university has a licence, they can request as much of a book or journal to be scanned as they wish, which is obviously not the case. There have also been requests to remove one scanned chapter from a book and replace it with a scanned chapter from the same book in the same academic year, which would be a breach of the licence. Prior to the new licence in 2008, there were several occasions when lecturers requested scans from non-UK publications. Fortunately these were picked up by the subject teams or the licence coordinator and rejected but it does indicate that some staff, despite it being prominently displayed in all the publicity, had not absorbed the “published in the UK” message.   Conclusion The CLA licence has been extremely useful in allowing 24/7 access to lecturer-recommended scans and is seen as a valuable service provided by the library. The decision to centralise the service in the library has led to the licence being well used by lecturers but has also placed a significant burden on the subject librarians and the licence co-ordinator. This is perhaps the most important decision to be taken when deciding how best to use the scanning licence – decentralise the licence so the lecturers do the scanning and adding themselves and hope that they adhere to the licence or take on the task of doing the scanning and adding the completed scan which means that you can police the licence but, in turn, places a significant workload on the staff concerned.    

Using the CLA scanning licence to offer 24x7 access to in-demand book chapters and journal articles at the University of Chester

https://chesterrep.openrepository.com/bitstream/10034/91353/8/peters-cla%20article.pdf

Using the CLA scanning licence to offer 24x7 access to in-demand book chapters and journal articles at the University of Chester

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

ChesterRep