If we are unable to purchase digital copies of books, journals, films or documentaries but hold a physical copy in the Library's collections we may be able to digitise it and make it available online for your students.

Further information on digitising books and journals and on digitising the Library's DVD collection is available below.

Books and journals: what can be digitised?

It is a strict requirement of the University’s copyright licence that digitised chapters and articles comply fully with a specific set of regulations governing scanning. Library staff are happy to check copyright compliance for any items you indicate you wish to have scanned, but there's a handy online compliance checking tool where you can enter a book's title or ISBN if you want to check this yourself.

The main points of the copyright licence related to scanning are as follows: Extract length: a maximum of one complete chapter from a book or one article per issue from a print journal or one poem or short story (max. 10 pages) from an anthology or 10% of the total work.  Library holdings: the University Library must hold at least one print copy of the work a scanned extract is taken from. In some cases it may be possible to obtain permission from the copyright holder to reproduce an extract from a work. Publisher restrictions: while most UK-published works may be scanned, some categories and works are excluded from the terms of the copright licence. Arrangements for other countries vary, but in general regulations governing scanning are more restrictive. Information on restricted works and regulations regarding overseas territories can be found here. Uploading: scanned readings must be made available via the online reading lists system - you should NOT upload scans to MMS or Moodle yourself. Readings uploaded to online reading lists are checked for copyright compliance and have a copyright coversheet attached.

To request scans of books and journals then please indicate this on your reading list and submit to readinglists@st-andrews.ac.uk. 

If you are creating your own reading list on Talis and wish to place the requests yourself then please follow the instructions on our guide. If we have scanned materials previously then please contact us to request for them to be rolled over.

DVD Collection: what can be digitised?

We ask that where possible academic colleagues identify alternative sources which are already online (see our multimedia guide) or which we can obtain a digital copy of (search for films on the Kanopy streaming service site and contact us to request that access to a title is purchased ).

If this is not possible and you would like us to provide digital copies of any films and documentaries then please note the following:

• the University Library must hold a copy of the DVD
• priority will be given to titles which are considered essential to the module (i.e. either those which would normally be screened in class and/or are required for students to complete an assessment).
• requests to digitise DVDs must be submitted by the reading list deadline prior to each semester in order for the work to be done
• due to legal requirements files can only be made available for a limited amount of time and not an entire semester (i.e. for the week they are to be streamed in to allow students to engage in tutorial discussion.
• if you do not specify the dates you wish them to be made available then we will automatically make them available for 7 days starting on the Saturday prior to the week they are listed for and with access ceasing on the Friday of that week
• where subtitles are available on the DVD then these will also be made available on the digital copy for accessibility reasons.

Uploading: The digital copies of the DVDs will be uploaded to Panopto but linked to via the online reading list system for students to access. You should NOT upload digital copies of films yourself unless you have received appropriate permissions from the rights holders. Files uploaded by the Library will be managed in line with legal requirements and have the appropriate copyright statement attached. 

To request titles to be made available digitally please indicate this on your reading list or send a separate list with the details to readinglists@st-andrews.ac.uk.