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Libraries and Learning Skills

Online reading lists (Talis Aspire) for Academic Staff

Digitisations

The University of Lincoln holds a Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA) Comprehensive Higher Education Licence. This Licence allows the University to create digitised material by scanning from printed books and journals in the library's collection. 

Digitised readings are scanned copies of book extracts or journal articles which are not otherwise available online from the University Library. 

If the Library does not have a copy of the publication, there may be the option to:

  • purchase a copy
  • obtain a copyright fee paid copy from the British Library.  There is a charge for this service and it will be taken from the relevant book fund.

Digitised readings are made available to students via the module's online reading list which can be accessed from the module site on Blackboard or the library website.

Making and distributing electronic copies of print material is restricted by copyright law. All digitisation requests must be checked to ensure that they are copyright-compliant. The reading list software makes these checks and records the information required by the CLA licence. 

Under the terms of the CLA Higher Education Licence it is possible to digitise:

  • an extract of no more than 10% of a book or one chapter (whichever is the greater) subject to copyright licence terms. For example, if a book is 400 pages long, you could have one chapter of any length or 40 pages in total (which may be more than one chapter).
  • up to 10% or one article from a single issue of a journal (whichever is greater).
  • one short story or one poem or one play of not more than 10 pages in an anthology of short stories, poems or plays.

There are restrictions from some publishers (US and other other countries). You can check whether a book can be scanned using the CLA Check Permissions site. It is not possible to provide a digitised reading where there is an accessible digital equivalent (e.g. an ebook) already available from the Library.

If the Library is unable to scan the item, you will be contacted to discuss further options.

If you are in any doubt about what may or may not be digitised, please contact your Learning and Teaching Librarian.

Resources that are digitised must be reported to the Copyright Licencing Agency. Reporting takes place automatically through the online reading lists (Talis).

3 steps to requesting a digitisation

Click on the three dots next to the reading list item and select 'request digitisation’.  

screenshot of digitisation request menu

Fill out the form with details of your request. All required information is starred*. If a section is not starred, you can leave it blank. 

If you are requesting a single chapter, simply fill in the title of the chapter. Supplying page numbers is optional for chapter digitisations.

digitisation request form

If you are requesting an excerpt that is longer or shorter than a single chapter, make sure to UNTICK the box that says ‘this is a full chapter’ and supply the page numbers of the section you wish scanned. (You can request multiple page ranges by clicking on the + add another  button).

full chapter box unticked

By copyright law, the library can scan a single chapter or up to 10% of a book; please be mindful of this when putting in requests for excerpts.

Finally, if the book contains endnotes or other references pages that should be included in the scan, please fill out the ‘reference range’ section. If not, please leave this section blank. 

reference page range

On the final screen, please indicate when you would like your digitisation to be available by choosing a date in the ‘needed by’ section. Please allow two weeks for the library to scan and upload your request.

needed by date box

FAQs

You will receive an automated email when your request is available to view via the online reading list.

 

The library will contact you by email if further information is needed or if there are any issues with your request.

Digitisations make printed materials more accessible by giving all students equal access. The library might own only one print copy of a key title, but with a digitisation, a chapter or excerpt of that book can easily be accessed by a large group of students.

 

Please request digitisations at least two weeks in advance.

This may seem like a lot of lead time but the library processes around 4000 digitisation requests per year; giving a fortnight's notice helps to have your digitisation ready by the date you request.