Collective licensing schemes such as the University’s
licence with the Copyright Licensing Agency
allow for the photocopying of certain materials, or the recording of broadcasts for educational
purposes. The collective licensing schemes do not yet cover most digitised material, and so they
do not cover either printing out from electronic sources or the photocopying of print-outs derived
from electronic sources. Nor do they cover the downloading and copying of electronic material.
For course use only, permission to scan printed pages, store and distribute such electronic
documents over a secure network is available under the terms of the CLA Higher Education
Digitisation Licence (‘Digitisation Licence’).
The Digitisation Licence covers firstly, scanning extracts
from a paper original (such as a book,
journal or a periodical) and converting the scanned file into a suitable form, and, secondly, making
the material available to students for course use on a secure intranet.
The Digitisation Licence is entirely transactional with
clearances provided through the CLA Rapid
Clearance Service (CLARCS). Before any material is scanned under the Digitisation Licence, an
authorisation number must be obtained through CLARCS at tel: 020 7631 5545. The University’s
CLARCS account number is CAM 612. Each University faculty / department has its own further
account number which must be given to CLARCS; these are available from the University’s
Copyright Officer.
Fees are determined for each transaction, determined by
the rights holder for the material to be
used. When you telephone CLARCS, you will be asked for bibliographic information about the
material and the use to which it will be put, the number of intranet users, and a fee will be quoted,
usually a fee of approximately 5p per page multiplied by the number of students enrolled on the
teaching module for which the material is required or recommended reading. The digitised files
must have compulsory headers and disclaimers added to them.
Note: at the time of writing (June 2005) an trial extension
to the CLA licence to cover digitisation is
being negotiated. The extended licence will allow the use of digitized material in secure
intranets/VLEs (precise conditions of use not yet known). It is likely that records of digitization
would be kept within the University to be accessed on demand by the CLA. It will be necessary for
universities to pay an additional fee to benefit from this licence. Contact JISC Legal
www.jisclegal.ac.uk
for current information.
Another service which offers ‘copyright clearance’
and digitised versions of books and journal
extracts for academic use is provided by HERON. The University has not signed up to the
scheme, but should there be a marked demand for this type of sue, the University will consider
subscribing to it. Information on the HERON scheme is available at www.heron.ingenta.com
All other content stored in an electronic format and published
on websites is subject to the
permission regime operated by the copyright owner (which may be formalised in an agreement or
licence). Discussions are underway to incorporate electronic material and it is hoped that this
will
soon be an option. In the meantime, it is good practice to check the website for specific
statements about downloading, printing and re-use. In the absence of such information the
webmaster may be contacted for lawful permission. Further information on collective licences held
by the University of Cambridge can be found on page 15 of
http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/cam-only/offices/legal/copyright/copyright.pdf. 
