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CLA Scanning Licence Overview

This a Licence from the Copyright Licensing Agency which permits certain categories of staff at the University to scan certain amounts of printed material and to store the digitised versions in such a way that they can be accessed by students studying on particular University courses, eg in WebCT. It can also be used for including material in PowerPoint presentations by staff.

The University has taken out a ‘CLA Scanning Licence’ for the period 1 August 2008 – 31 July 2011. It is possible that during that period the terms and conditions associated with the Licence may be modified. Full details of any changes will be forwarded to members of the University as appropriate.

The Licence allows:

(a) material that has been scanned under the terms of the licence to be mounted on a secure VLE such as WebCT;

(b) scanned material, such as artistic works from books, to be displayed in a lecture, for example, as part of a PowerPoint presentation;

(c) Library Services (LS) to obtain digitized versions of qualifying material on behalf of other staff for use as part of particular courses.

Note: The Licence envisages scanning to be carried out in respect of material needed for teaching on a ‘per course’ basis. The Licence definition of a ‘course of study’ is: “any whole course of study or any segment of a student’s studies which is normally regarded by the Licensee as a discrete and self-contained unit for the purposes of examination or assessment or, in the case of a non credit bearing course, that particular course.” A ‘course’ therefore can last for a term, a semester or a year or part thereof.

Since its introduction, the CLA have raised concerns that tutors are using the licence to create 'virtual course packs' made up of many scanned articles or book chapters rather than advising students to buy a 'course book' which would cover the material needed for the course.

They have produced a Good Practice Guide in the creation of course packs and tutors who are preparing material for a course are advised to read this before doing so.

Terms and Conditions

Here in overview are some of the major terms and conditions associated with the Licence.

For more detailed information, see other pages in this website including the CLA HE Licence - User Guidelines (PDF, 118KB)

Who can do the scanning?

Under the Licence, scanning of material can be carried out by ‘Designated Persons’. All Academic Teaching or Research staff with responsibility for teaching on a recognised course, all Academic-related staff, all Administrative staff working for a School or College, and all permanent staff of Library Services are ‘Designated Persons’ for the purpose of the Licence.

What can be scanned?

In general, chapters or extracts from books, articles or extracts from journals, a paper or extracts from a set of conference proceedings, a law report, or poems and short stories from anthologies can be scanned. However, there are limitations as to what and how much can be scanned. The material has to satisfy a number of criteria before scanning can take place.

Publishers

The majority of printed items from UK publishers are included. A large number of USA publishers are also part of the scheme. Some International Territories are also included. International publishers with a UK publishing address (as opposed to simply a distribution address) are also included. (If you are unsure about this, please seek advice from Library Services – see below). Some UK publishers have excluded certain of their published works from the scheme, and not all US publishers are participating. Lists of publishers or works excluded from scanning can be seen at:

Ownership

The University (not the individual) has to own a copy of the material to be scanned. This means it must be part of the University Library collection, or a College, School, Department or Unit collection. If the University Library has a copy of the item, then a tutor’s own copy can be used for scanning purposes. (This is probably desirable as it is less likely to have had marginalia etc written into it!)

Version

The most recent edition of the work must be used for the scanning, unless there is a specific reason for using an older edition, e.g. a particular chapter, text or illustration appears in the earlier but not the later edition.

Digitization history

If there is a digital version already in existence which can be used for the purpose intended, then that should be used rather than (re-)scanning the printed copy. For example, if the material is a journal article that can be accessed through our eJournals facility then there is no need to scan an original print copy. This means that before scanning you have to do a certain amount of checking to establish whether or not a suitable digital version already exists. If there is a particular need to scan material that already exists in a digital version then a reason will have to be provided.

Amount that can be scanned

There is a limit to the amount from any one work that can be scanned. It matches that of the CLA Photocopying Licence. The copied material must not exceed either singly or in aggregate the greater of:

  • five (5) per cent of any published edition

OR

  • in the case of a book: one complete chapter;
  • in the case of an article in an issue of a serial publication or in a set of conference proceedings: one whole article;
  • in the case of an anthology of short stories or poems: one short story or poem not exceeding ten (10) pages in length;
  • in the case of a published report of judicial proceedings: the entire report of a single case.

However, the Licence does permit:

  • the same extract of a book, journal or magazine to be made simultaneously available to students on more than one discrete course of study
  • a digital copy of a different part of the same book, journal and magazine to be made available to students on another course of study

Image Scanning

Images occurring in a work can be scanned as part of the whole work, as part of a single page from a work, or as disembedded items taken from the work.

What cannot be scanned?

There are a number of categories of material that are not covered by the Scanning Licence. These include printed music (words and notation), maps, newspapers, charts or books of tables, public examination papers, in-house company journals and anything explicitly marked as being outside of the CLA licensing scheme. If in doubt, see the CLA HE Licence - User Guidelines (PDF, 118KB) or seek advice from Library Services.

Copyright Notice

Every item scanned must have a copyright notice attached to it. This applies to chapters from books, articles from journals and even single images disembedded from text. If the item (especially if it is an image) is required for inclusion in a PowerPoint presentation, then there needs to be a notice attached to the item within the presentation. (There are a number of ways this can be done – see Procedures which deals with this matter.) A Copyright Notice template (DOC) for completing and attaching to files is also available on this website.

Record keeping

Everything that is scanned under the licence has to be recorded. Included in the record for the item will be details of the course that it is related to, along with the number of students on the course who will have access to it. The Record Sheet template (DOC) and an Example Sheet (PDF, 33KB) can also be downloaded and copied from this website. Copies of completed record sheets need to be returned to Library Services, as per the instructions given in the Procedures.

Further Advice

For further advice on this topic or copyright in general, please contact:

Malcolm Kendall
Legislation Manager
Library Services

Tel: +44 (0)121 414 4749
University Ext: 44749
Email: copyright@contacts.bham.ac.uk

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.