Digital readings
About the Digital Readings Service
The Library's Digital Readings Service (DRS) provides Brunel academic staff with digitised course readings to support teaching that is fully compliant with copyright law and licensing regulations.
The DRS obtains licensed digital copies of extracts from the printed editions of published books and periodicals. Digitised readings are normally obtained from the British Library. Please note that the DRS cannot guarantee that all items you request can be made available as digital readings as they are subject to copyright compliance checks.
Obligations under copyright regulations
Only extracts from publishers and titles that participate in the Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA) Higher Education Photocopying and Scanning Licence are permitted. Brunel University holds a basic CLA licence which excludes digital originals.
In addition:
- readings must be organised in collections by module
- readings must be stored on a secure network, accessible only to Brunel staff and students
- only students enrolled on the relevant module, and its teaching staff, are permitted to download or print the digital readings
- where a reading is required on multiple modules, a request must be made for each and is subject to the results of copyright compliance checks
- limits and exclusions apply
What materials are covered
The DRS can obtain digital readings from Library stock or from non-stock items, but is prohibited under the CLA Licence terms from obtaining digital readings from materials the Library subscribes to as an e-book or e-journal. Using readings extracted from subscription e-resources is prohibited under the University’s CLA licence. The individual licence terms for each resource must be checked for permissions – see Copying from e-journals for further guidance.
Licensed countries - Digital readings may be sourced from printed books and periodicals published in the UK, USA, Australia, Canada (and Quebec), France, Ireland, South Africa, Spain, and Switzerland. Exclusions apply.
Exclusions -The following types of works are not covered for use and always require explicit authorisation or a licence from the copyright owner.
- databases
- e-journals
- other digital or web-based resources
- multimedia
Amendments occur periodically. The CLA website holds complete up-to-date lists of excluded works and categories and international territories.
How to request digital readings
This service is only able to provide readings to academic staff for digital course packs. Materials required for private study or research purposes should be requested using the inter library loans service.
To request digital readings for your module, e-mail a completed request form to the Digital Readings Service or your Subject Liaison Librarian. The information requested on the form is required for copyright compliance checks and missing information may delay processing.
Where to find your digital readings
Once available, digital readings are stored on SharePoint and a link is added in Talis Aspire, our reading list software. If you want to provide a link to the digital reading from anywhere else then please contact your Subject Liaison Librarian.
