Digital scanning service
The rules of digital scanning and how academic staff can request a scan
The Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA) HE Licence allows the creation of scanned copies of published material in specific circumstances for teaching and in accordance with copyright legislation.
To comply with the terms of the Licence and enable the full reporting that the CLA requires, all digital copies must be authorised and made by Library and Learning Services staff.
Requesting a scan
To request the scanning of a publication to support your teaching, please follow the process below.
Scanning for course modules must be in accordance with our CLA Licence, under which the limits are:
- one article from a periodical, or
- one chapter of or 10% of a book – whichever is the greater.
In addition, the CLA offers us a Second Extract Permissions Service:
By paying a fee, we are able to double the normal limits to include a second article from the same periodical, or two chapters; 20% of a book. Please note that this service does not cover all publications, as it relies upon a rights-holder opting in to the service.
The item must be owned either by York St John University (in stock at Library and Learning Services) or obtainable from another library that is licensed to make copyright cleared copies.
Scanning must be for educational use and relate to a specific course of study.
All of our scanning requests are processed through Your Reading Lists, so if your request meets the above requirements and you edit your own reading lists, the quickest and most efficient way to request a scan is to add the book chapter or journal article details to your reading list and add a Library Note requesting a scan.
If you do not edit your own reading lists, you can use our Reading List Scanning Request form or contact your Academic Liaison Librarian.
Once a digitisation request has been received and the details have been verified, a scan will be made by Library and Learning Services staff which will include a copyright title sheet to comply with the CLA regulations. A link to the material will be added automatically to the appropriate online reading list. Please note that at busy times of the year (such as at the start of a semester) there may be longer than usual wait for scans to be completed.
Access to scans is provided through the CLA’s Digital Content Store. Please note that scans cannot be uploaded directly to Moodle as this will breach the conditions of our licence.
Newspaper articles are not included under the terms of the licence.
Material either available through York St John University in electronic format, e.g. a journal article available as an electronic journal through Library and Learning Services, will not be scanned.
For further guidance on copyright issues, and clarification of the legislation, please see our copyright information pages.
Only items published in the UK will automatically be covered by our licence. Material published elsewhere in the world will be subject to possible exclusion depending on the conditions imposed by the publisher.
For further information, please contact your Academic Liaison Librarian: academicliaisonteam@yorksj.ac.uk
