Electronic Resources in the Virtual Learning

Equipment and resources
When launching an electronic coursepack service there are considerable
resource implications, both for the hardware and software required, but
also for a budget to pay permission fees. The LSE invested in the
following equipment:
■
server to store the digital files;
■
high-quality scanner with sheet feeder;
■
PC with Adobe Acrobat, FTP software.
The electronic coursepack service also had a significant budget to pay
copyright clearance fees. In 2003/4 this budget was increased to
£47,000. This allowed approximately 900 readings to be made available
to students in over 70 courses.
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Staffing
The LSE showed considerable foresight in placing a librarian within the
learning technology team in 1999. The Assistant Librarian (Learning
Technology) has responsibility for digital copyright, managing the
electronic course pack service and integrating library resources into the
VLE. The service was also supported by a part-time library assistant
post, which in 2003 was increased to two part-time posts. The assistants
undertake much of the routine copyright clearance work, liaising with
the Copyright Licensing Agency, and dealing with online permission
requests for the Copyright Clearance Center. They also scan material,
add copyright notices to the documents and upload them to the secure
server. Meanwhile the Assistant Librarian did much of the promotion
and publicity for the service, carried out an evaluation of the procedures
and processes and liaised with academic staff.
Digital rights management
With the enormous growth in the demand for the electronic coursepack
service in 2001, it became clear that the simple in-house built database,
which was recording bibliographic information and details about the
price and licence for each extract, needed major modifications. Staff at
the LSE had become familiar with the online system HERONweb, which
was used to enter bibliographical details and track progress of items
processed by HERON. Information, such as when the clearance was
submitted, the price that was paid and the status of an extract at any one
time, was extremely valuable. However, keeping track of the large
number of extracts being processed in house was more difficult.
Therefore the LSE approached HERON about the possibilities of
developing a system that could manage both the material produced in
house and the HERON material. A number of meetings were held
between staff at the LSE and the Technical Manager at HERON and a
detailed specification was drawn up by the LSE. This ultimately led to
the development of Packtracker, which was initially given a trial at the
LSE but is now available as a commercial product.
1
Packtracker was
extremely important in the expansion of the electronic coursepack
system. The system has numerous features including:
■
automated permission requests to the CLA and to publishers
accepting e-mail and written permissions;
■
extract tracking so the status of an item can be seen at a glance;
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■
scheduling functions that allow staff to see, for example: all items that
need scanning, all items awaiting copyright clearance, all items
completed and uploaded;
■
a ‘week’ function that allows material to be processed according to
when it is required in the academic year;
■
licence information so that material can be removed once a permission
has expired or uploaded once it has been granted;
■
a clear audit trail so that invoices can be traced and budgets managed.
Production process
The CLA Higher Education Digitisation Licence is currently operating
on a transactional basis, therefore all readings that are scanned for class
use require copyright permission. Until 2001 all digital readings were
copyright cleared and scanned in-house. However, in 2001, to cope with
the increased demand for the service, the LSE decided to outsource
approximately a quarter of their electronic coursepacks to the HERON
Service. This meant that requests could be submitted to HERON via
their online system HERONweb, and the material would be copyright
cleared and digital files subsequently provided. Before 2001 the service
had processed no more than 100 items in an academic year; however, in
line with the increased demand for WebCT courses, staff requests for
electronic coursepacks increased exponentially.
Figure 6.1 shows the production process of the electronic coursepack
service in 2003/4.
It is worth noting at this stage that many academic staff at LSE employ
course designers, who are often PhD students, to do much of the work
in creating and updating the WebCT course and electronic coursepack.
Course designers are currently paid from a grant administered by the
CLT. However, all staff setting up an online course are offered an
electronic coursepack. Staff then liaise with the Assistant Librarian over
the contents of the pack before it is submitted to the team for processing.
The first stage is usually checking the list to ensure all the required
information is present (see below for more details). Material is then
submitted first to the CLA for clearance and if this fails to the CCC.
Publishers are used as the third option, unless a reading is an ‘author
permission’, where free permission will be requested from the publisher.
Once copyright clearance has been obtained the reading can be scanned.
The readings are scanned at a resolution of 200 dpi using Adobe Acrobat
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to create a PDF image file. All items then have a copyright header sheet
inserted as the first page to comply with the CLA licence. This work is
done in Acrobat, and the final file is saved locally on a PC before being
uploaded to a secure server using FTP. The secure server is configured so
that it uses IP authentication on-campus and the LSE network username
and password for off-campus access. Each reading has a stable URL
which is e-mailed to the lecturer and the course designer. They manually
need to copy and paste the URL into the e-coursepack template file, then
upload this to WebCT.
Requirements and limitations
To process the requests from academic staff for electronic coursepacks,
a number of requirements and limitations were set up as the service
became more established and demand increased. A limit on the number
of items that could be submitted to the service was established in 2003,
following some courses requesting over 90 core readings. The limit was
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Figure 6.1
Electronic Coursepack production process

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Case studies and practical examples
set at 20 readings per term, or two readings per week. Readings were
also expected to be no greater than 35 pages in length, which reduced the
amount of printing that students needed to do and increased the
likelihood of gaining copyright clearance. To speed up processing time
for reading lists, staff were asked to supply the following information:
■
course (module) title and code;
■
lecturer(s) involved;
■
estimated student numbers;
■
full bibliographic details of the items they required;
■
page numbers of the item they required;
■
ISBN or ISSN;
■
week of term reading was required;
■
a clean photocopy of the item required.
Presenting the electronic coursepacks in WebCT
Until 2002, course designers were able to incorporate links to readings
throughout a WebCT course. However, the Centre for Learning
Technology (CLT) found that students had problems when links to
electronic readings were presented without some indication of any access
restrictions. They also found that the level of use for electronic readings
(many of which have been copyright cleared or licensed specifically for a