Secker, J.; (2001) Access to Core Course Materials Project: Teaching Collection Experiment report. UCL Library Services / Education and Professional Development: London, UK.

Preview

PDF 14081.pdf Download (294kB)

Abstract

This report documents the third phase in the Access to Core Course Material project, known as the Teaching Collection Experiment. The work began in March 2001 and was completed in September 2001. The Teaching Collection is the name given to the printed reserve at UCL. It contains off-prints of essential course readings that are kept behind issue desks at both the Main and Science Library. Lecturers can place up to five copies of materials in the Collection, which are entered onto the library catalogue and given an unique identifying number. The Experiment investigated the feasibility of digitising a selection of this material and making it available electronically. This report documents the production process and compares the costs and quality of an in-house service with out-sourcing production. This allowed the project team to investigate the feasibility of offering a clearance and/or digitisation service in-house and the costs associated with such activities. The experiment also examined how this service related to the current activities of the Library and might be integrated into existing services. Following on from this experiment, a pilot service known as DigiCOMS was offered to a further 5 departments at UCL. The digitised material produced during the Teaching Collection Experiment was therefore made available through the DigiCOMS service. More details about DigiCOMS are available in a separate report. The Economics Department was selected to participate in this experiment, as they currently use the Teaching Collection to deposit a considerable number of course readings. Using a department from the social sciences also compliments the earlier work for the Dutch Department. It was also important to choose a department whose reading lists contained considerable numbers of published journal articles and chapters from books that required copyright permission from publishers. A selection of material that the department currently deposit in the Teaching Collection was identified, in addition to some material which students had found problematic to get hold of in the past. It should be pointed out at this stage that the distinction between a printed study pack and a teaching collection item in a print environment is significant, in particular for legal reasons, because a set of readings cannot placed within the teaching collection to avoid the copyright costs associated with producing a study pack. However, this distinction is less clear cut once material is made available electronically. Therefore, although the material in the teaching collection did not form a printed study pack, the set of digitised readings are referred to as an electronic study pack. Electronic permissions are also granted by publishers along similar lines to printed study packs, in that the pricing model is based on the length of a particular extract and the number of students on the course.

Download activity - last month

Export as JSONCSVXML

Download activity - last 12 months

Export as CSVXMLJSON

Downloads by country - last 12 months

Export as JSONCSVXML

Archive Staff Only

View Item