Although people tend to think of the Library as a collection of physical books, a key part of our offer to students is the provision of digitised readings through Moodle. We work with module leaders to ensure that book chapters and journal articles are available online for students to read in advance of their lectures and seminars. Last year we received and processed 2,503 new requests for digitised readings and e-journal links, and a further 2,849 digitised readings which had been scanned in previous years were re-checked for compliance.
It is very important that the digitisation of material is carried out by the Library as detailed records of each scan must be kept and reported annually to the Copyright Licensing Agency. There are strict copyright rules pertaining to the sharing of published material online and we check compliance with our scanning licence before readings are produced. This includes ensuring that no more than one chapter of a book, or one article from a journal issue, is scanned per module.*
We also work to ensure that all readings are provided in an accessible format. All materials digitised by the Library for Moodle are formatted as readable PDFs. Text can be copied and pasted, read aloud with text-to-speech software, or annotated.
It is a huge operation with deadlines in place to enable us to meet the demand for the service at peak times and to ensure the material is made available to students when they need it. We are therefore continuously reviewing and refining our workflows. The ongoing work of a member of our E-Services team, Robert Williams, has driven these improvements over a number of years.
Robert has applied his coding skills and understanding of APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) to different stages of the digitisation process. In simple terms, APIs enable software systems to talk to each other. In this case, he has written programmes which have allowed us to automate the key tasks of checking ISBNs against the Copyright Licensing Agency’s database of works covered by their license, and to find out whether we hold the latest editions. Together, these programmes have increased the speed by which we are able to process requests, reduced the chance of error and freed up staff to carry out other tasks.
This is a great example of the way individual staff initiative can have a positive benefit on our services. At Birkbeck we have fewer staff than many academic libraries, and it is therefore vital that we support their development and foster a culture whereby they are able to apply any newly learned skills. Using APIs is just one way that we have reduced the administrative burden of managing the digitised readings service.
If you’re interested, Robert has published a more in-depth account of his work in SCONUL Focus.
Further information about our digitisation service is also available.
*or 10% – whichever is the greater.