The Digital Resources Management Centre

The Digital Resources Management Centre [DRMC] provides a centralised service for the processing and copyright management of all journal articles, book chapters and other text materials that are required for teaching purposes by staff members of the University of Adelaide.
For each request that is submitted the Centre will check for an existing published electronic copy; if a copy is available online to the University of Adelaide, the staff member requesting the article will be notified of the relevant URL link. If there is no existing electronic copy, the Centre will scan book chapters and journal articles, in accordance with copyright provisions, and place them in a central repository. The digitised material will be accessible through the Library catalogue to University of Adelaide staff and students who can provide appropriate authentication.
Stable URLs for articles in the central repository will be provided to teaching staff who wish to link to them from MyUni.
The Centre will maintain ongoing records of all digital copies to ensure that there is no copyright infringement.

Contact details:

• Email: drmc@adelaide.edu.au
• Telephone: 8303 5774
• Location: Barr Smith Library Level 3 South

For information on copyright, please contact Geraldine Haese

Services

The Digital Resources Management Centre:

• Scans copyright material
• Maintains the copyright record for electronic copying
• Provides links to enable you and your students to access copyright materials online within 5 working days
• Accepts requests in any format as long as the instructions are clear and the required information is included (every course using an item requested for scanning must be listed). You may prefer to use the Digitisation Request Form, or email your reading list to drmc@adelaide.edu.au

All items need to be requested each academic year for copyright record maintenance (even if you have been using the items in the previous academic year).

Submitting a request

You will need to fill in a Digitisation Request Form. Please take care to complete the form fully and accurately to avoid delays in processing your request. If you prefer, you may give your reading list to your Research Librarian or Branch Librarian with the required information.

If the Library does not hold the publication, please send us a copy of the relevant journal issue or book chapter, if you have one; the best quality image can be created from the original document. The Centre is not permitted to use copies that you have obtained for your personal use from the Document Delivery service; this is in breach of the undertaking you signed when you requested the article. The Library will need to obtain another copy for digitisation purposes.

Please inform the Centre if you have a student with a print disability in your course so that a text version of the scanned article may be supplied if needed.

Exam papers

The University's Records Disposal Schedule no: 2001/01, effective 9 May 2001 - 30 June 2011, gives the University Library responsibility for retaining permanently a master set of examination question papers (item no. 2.2.4 of the schedule - it's on page 7) [the full schedule is available from the University Policies website].

The Digital Resources Management Centre will digitise past exam papers and make them available to students through the Exam papers search option of the Library Catalogue. The simplest way to arrange for your exam papers to be digitised is to attach them to an email addressed to the DRMC.
Electronic format is preferred for deposit: the order of preference for file formats is:

1. Adobe Acrobat .pdf file
2. MS Word file
3. Paper copy sent by internal mail to DRMC, c/- Barr Smith Library

Departments should indicate if an exam paper is not to be made available to students. The University's Records Management Policy requires that a copy of every examination paper must be deposited in the Library, even if a department or academic decides that they do not want it made available to students.

Copyright

The legislative framework within which all University of Adelaide staff must operate is the Copyright Act. This is a Commonwealth Act and fulfils Australia's obligations under various international treaties. This framework means that we cannot reproduce copyright works unless we have the permission of the copyright owner. However, we have two statutory licences which give us limited exemption from the general copyright law because of our status as an "educational institution". These licences are not free and cost the University of Adelaide about $450,000 a year.

The first statutory licence is given to educational institutions under Part VA of the Act and allows for the copying of audio-visual material from television, radio, satellite or cable (including pay TV).

The second statutory licence is covered under Part VB of the Act and allows for the copying of print material (including digital material online).

These licences are only applicable if the following criteria are met:

• the copying is undertaken for students of the University of Adelaide
• the material copied is for teaching purposes (for example, it cannot be for a sporting club)
• the copying is within the limits set by the Act (that is, one chapter or 10% of a book, or 10% of the number of words in a book in the digital environment (whichever is greater) or one article from a journal issue). There are separate provisions with respect to books which are out-of-print or cannot be purchased within a reasonable time

In the digital environment there are two further requirements:

• that the material placed online must be password protected and not available to the public
• a warning notice set by Regulation under the Act is placed immediately preceding, or on, a piece of copyright material online. (It is not sufficient to place a warning notice on the first page of, for example, an online teaching program - the warning notice must be repeated on each copyright chapter/article)

If University staff want to copy material which falls outside the statutory licence provisions, then they must obtain the written consent of the copyright owner.

The "fair dealing" provisions under the Act apply only to individual staff and students. Staff may copy a "reasonable amount" for their own private study, research, comment or criticism, without breaching the Act.

For more information visit the University's Copyright Information page, or contact Geralgine Haese.

Accessing the digitised documents

When your request has been processed you will be notified by e-mail. The Centre will also notify you of the stable URL link that you may use to link to the digitised article from MyUni.
The article will also be accessible by searching the Library Catalogue under author and/or title, and by using keywords from the author, title, lecturer and course code.

Time needed for processing

The time needed for processing depends on the ability of the Centre to get the physical item for the digitisation process. With no obstacles, the turnaround time will be five working days from the time the Centre receives your request.

Benefits of using the Centre

• Highly used articles and book chapters are available to every student doing the course at all times and from anywhere
• The items are available for use in more than one course with little added effort to the lecturers
• You can optionally provide links to individual resources from within your MyUni course
• Links provided by the Library work from home as well (authentication is built in)
• Ensures that the University does not breach its legal responsibility to provide only one copy of any digitised copyright material for teaching and research purposes.

Background information

The Digital Resources Management Centre is an initiative of three areas of the University of Adelaide: the University Library; the Division of the University Secretary; and the Learning and Teaching Development Unit. It has been established to monitor the production of copyright material in digital format, to ensure compliance with Copyright legislation.

All copyright material that is to be made available for teaching purposes on MyUni must be requested through the Digital Resources Management Centre.

Objectives

To provide a central point for the digitisation of all copyright text material that is required for University of Adelaide teaching purposes. This will ensure that:

• academic staff are provided with assistance in placing material online
• Departments save money by the use of:
  • existing Library e-journals and databases for which the Library pays a subscription
  • existing expertise, equipment and infrastructure
  • existing copyright compliance systems
• records for electronic copying are maintained in a single database using the Voyager Library system
• users have easy access to digital texts through the Library catalogue
• academic staff have access to stable URLs for linking to digital texts from MyUni
• compliance with usage monitoring systems that have been established by copyright collecting agencies
• compliance with Agreements that the University has entered into with copyright collecting agencies
• compliance with Part VB statutory licences under the Copyright Act

Frequently asked questions

The answers to many of the questions you may have about the Digital Resources Management Centre could be on our Frequently asked questions page.

Further information

• How to check what you have requested for a particular course (pdf 325kB)
• University of Adelaide Copyright page
• Australian Copyright Act
• Australian Copyright Council. Information Sheets
• Learning and Disability Access