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CLA Scanning Licence: Ownership of works

Before you scan any item under the CLA Scanning Licence, you need to carry out a number of checks including finding out if the University owns a printed copy of the work.

If you want to scan an item and produce a digital version for use within WebCT or a PowerPoint presentation under the terms of the CLA Scanning Licence then certain terms and conditions have to be met.

You should first check whether or not the students already have access to a digital version via the services that Library Services provides.

You then you have to check whether or not the item is excluded from the scheme, using the lists on the CLA website.

Please see the other guidance notes and web pages on how to conduct those checks.

If the item is covered by the licence and not excluded from the scheme and there is no existing digital version of the work in a suitable format, then you next check to see if the University owns a printed copy of the book or journal.

Owned by the University means that there is a copy in the collections managed by Library Services (any Library or Resource Centre), or that there is a copy in a College, School, Department or Unit collection that has been purchased by that Unit.

If the printed copy (including review copies) is owned by a member of staff but is not owned by the University then it CANNOT be scanned under the Licence. (Note, however, that if the University does own a copy then the staff member can use their own copy for the actual scanning. This might be preferable as it is less likely to have been damaged or defaced in any way.)

Here are the places you should check:

Items acquired before 1972 that have not yet been added to the Library Catalogue are located on:

There is also:

Not all the archive collections are catalogued. More information about Special Collections' holdings is available from:

Some Schools and Units have their own Library facilities, e.g. Computer Science, Health Services Management Centre. The contents of these are not included in the Library Services’ Catalogues.

Nevertheless, books and journals in these collections are owned by the University and are eligible for scanning under the Licence (providing the other conditions are satisfied).

You should check with the appropriate School or Unit Office or Library to determine whether or not they have a ‘University owned’ copy of the item to be scanned.

If the University does not already own a copy, then you can make a request as normal to Library Services to purchase a copy, but it is probably better and cheaper to ask Library Services to obtain a ‘Copyright Fee Paid’ copy of the chapter or article in question from a source such as the British Library. This can then be used as the source for scanning. Please contact the Document Supply Team.

Creative Commons Licence
CLA Scanning Licence - Copyright Support by University of Birmingham, Library Services is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at www.library.bham.ac.uk.