Electronic Course Materials Service

• What is the Electronic Course Materials Service (ECMS)?
• What are electronic course materials?
• How do I submit material to ECMS?
• Are there any special format requirements for the submission of materials?
• How long will it be before the materials are available to students?
• Can I scan my own materials and store them on my divisional server?
• How much can I copy or scan?
• What is the new communication right established in recent amendments to the Copyright Act?
• What is the limit on the amount of material which can be communicated via the University network?
• What are the alternatives if the material I wish to make available online exceeds the limits?
• How can I link to library resources from my course web site without using the ECMS service?
• How do I link to electronic course materials from my course web site?
• Will traditional print Reserve Collections continue to exist?
• Will the Electronic Course Materials Service replace printed unit materials?

What is the Electronic Course Materials Service (ECMS)?

The Electronic Course Materials Service (ECMS) is the University's official repository for all digitized text-based copyright materials required for student course work.

It provides a centralised service for the submission, processing, production and copyright management of all readings from books and journals, to be made available online. Submitted materials will be made available via the Library's Millennium system. The readings will also be able to be linked to from any of the course management systems in use at Murdoch University (eg WebCT), or a local website.

The staff can provide advice on the use of existing electronic resources from full-text databases and electronic journal collections. The centralised processing of all digital copyright material will ensure more effective compliance with the requirements of the Copyright Act and allow the creation of a repository of electronic readings as a University-wide resource.

The Service does not require the inclusion of non-copyright material such as lecture notes, solutions to assignments and exercises and other administrative materials relating to your course. This material can continue to be housed on course web sites on divisional and school servers. You are not precluded, however, from having a library record linked to such items or having it held by the Library if necessary (contact the Library if you have questions on this).

Electronic materials will automatically be accessible from the Library's Online Catalogue and Reserve Collection and will be searchable by author, article/chapter title, keywords, course code and lecturer's name.

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What are electronic course materials?

• Printed materials such as chapters from books or journal articles which have been scanned into a digital format, or obtained in digital format such as via the LIDDAS Document Delivery Service
• Existing digital documents such as full-text database articles, electronic journals, and electronic books. The ECMS staff can provide advice on the availability and use of existing electronic resources relevant to your subject. In most cases ECMS staff will simply provide a link to the electronic document.

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Are there any special format requirements for the submission of materials?

Electronic formats accepted include:

• images (BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, TIFF)
• sounds (MP3, WAV)
• movies (AVI, MOV)
• animation (MPEG)
• documents (DOC, PDF, PPT, TXT)
• HTML files
• URLs

The preferred format is pdf, which can be produced by:

• Scanning the document using Adobe Acrobat software, or some other software which will allow conversion to pdf format.
• Installing the Adobe Acrobat software, which is intergrated seamlessly into MS Office applications. Documents can simply be printed to Adobe instead of a conventional printer, which will automatically generate a pdf file from a Word, Excel or Powerpoint document.

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If you are unable to supply an electronic copy of the material, you can provide a photocopy. However you should expect that it may take up to 10 working days for the material to be available. Please note if the material is held in print in the library you do not need to provide copies.

Photocopies should be:

• Good quality copies of original items suitable for scanning.
• Single sided copies.
• Same orientation for all pages (portrait or landscape).
• Reasonably square on the page with a margin of at least 2 cm.
• Without black edges or shadows.

For copyright management purposes, please supply full citation details for all submitted items, as shown on the request forms.

How long will it be before the materials are available to students?

We will endeavour to process your request as quickly as possible. If you submit your materials as an electronic copy, they will receive a higher priority, and we will endeavour to have them available within 72 hours. If you provide us with print copy that needs to be scanned, you should expect for them to take up to 10 working days. Once your request has been completed you will be emailed the record URL(s) so you can check the item(s) and also link from WebCT or other web site if you wish.

Can I scan my own materials and store them on my divisional server?

No. From 17 February 2003, digitised copyright material may be located only on the Electronic Course Materials Service server in the Library. Digitised copyright material currently on division, school or other servers must therefore be transferred to the ECMS as soon as possible. It is expected that periodic audits will be conducted, to confirm the transfer of such material has been carried out.

The University has determined that it will provide a centralised service to minimise the risk of copyright infringement across the University. For this reason, all copyright materials intended to be made available online for courses must be processed through the Electronic Course Materials Service. All readings will include a copyright notice as now required by the Copyright Act, and authorised access will be restricted to students and staff of the University. If you have negotiated special conditions for access to any material please discuss this with the relevant Library staff.

How much can I copy or scan?

The reproduction of copyright material for educational purposes is governed by the statutory licence provision set out in Part VB of the Copyright Act. This allows the University to make multiple copies of material for student course work in return for a royalty payment.

The Act specifies that a 'reasonable portion' of a copyright work or periodical publication can be copied or communicated for educational purposes.

• 10% of the number of pages in a work or, if the work is divided into chapters, one chapter;
• more than the above limit can be copied if the work is out of print. Library staff will assist you in determining this;
• the whole or part of a literary or dramatic work in a published anthology if not more than 15 pages;
• 10% of a piece of notated music;
• an artistic work if it is not seperately published or is unobtainable in a reasonable time;
• an artistic work which accompanies a literary or dramatic work for the purpose of explaining or illustrating text that is already being copied under the licence.

• 10% of the number of words in a work or, if the work is divided into chapters, one chapter;
• 10% of a piece of notated music;
• more than 10% of an electronic literary, dramatic, or musical work can be copied if the work is not available in electronic form within a reasonable time at an ordinary commercial price;
• the whole of an artistic work may be copied from the Internet and communicated via ECMS without any requirement to confirm its availability or cost.
• Please note: these provisions may be overridden by contract or subscription terms of use.

For periodical publications the following can be copied or scanned:

• one article per issue of a periodical publication (whether copied in hard copy or digital format).
• two or more articles can be copied from the same issue of a periodical provided they relate to the same specific subject matter.

It should be noted that the right to reproduce and communicate electronic material may be limited if the Library or University has signed a licence agreement specifying stricter limitations on copying and stricter conditions of access. On the other hand licence conditions may allow us to reproduce more than the Copyright Act permits. Library staff will provide advice on licence conditions governing the various full-text databases to which the Library subscribes.

All requests to scan and communicate materials will be checked for copyright compliance. You will be notified if your request is deemed to infringe copyright, and the Library staff will suggest alternative access methods to meet the information needs of your students.

What is the new communication right established by the 2001 amendment to the Copyright Act?

The Digital Agenda Amendments to the Copyright Act, which came into effect in March 2001, created a new right for authors - the right to make their work available online via a communications network. The statutory licence provision of the Act, which enables the University to make multiple copies of copyright material for educational purposes, has now been extended to include the communication process. Universities can now make student course readings available online subject to some very significant restrictions - see below.

The University will be required to make a royalty payment to the copyright owner in return for the right to communicate the material, just as it makes a royalty payment for multiple copies of hard copy material.

What is the limit on the amount of material which can be communicated via the University network?

The terms of the Copyright Act and the remuneration agreement with the collecting society mean there are strict limits on the amount of material which can be made available online. In the case of a published book (either print or electronic format) no more than 10%, or one chapter, of the work can be communicated across the entire University at any one time.

In other words, if a lecturer has copied a chapter of Patrick White's Voss, and made this available online, no other lecturer in the University can make another part of the same work available online in reliance on the Part VB licence until this first part is taken down. Failure to comply with this limit will result in loss of the licence for the second (and subsequent) portions of a work made available online.

Note that:

• More than one chapter or 10% of a separately published work may be communicated if the work is out of print. Library staff will assist you in determining this.
• The limits to online communication of periodical articles apply to individual units, not to the entire University. One article from any issue of a periodical can be communicated per unit.
• Two or more articles from any one issue of a periodical may be communicated per unit if they are on the same specific subject
• Licence agreements entered into by the University may affect the amount of material which can be copied and communicated. Library staff will assist in interpreting the various licence agreements for full-text products.

All requests to communicate materials will be checked for copyright compliance. You will be notified if your request is deemed to infringe copyright, and the Library staff will suggest alternative access methods to meet the information needs of your students.

What are the alternatives if the material I wish to make available online exceeds the limits?

There may be situations where the material you wish to copy and communicate exceeds the limits set down by the Copyright Act. There will also be situations where you may find that another member of staff has already arranged for a chapter of a book to be made available online, thus blocking you from making further chapters of that work available online.

In these situations Library staff will discuss a range of options with you, including the following:

• Negotiating with the academic staff member who has requested that the initial chapter be made available online. It may be possible to take this chapter down and to make your chapter available online for a defined period of time.
• It may be possible to communicate a greater proportion of the works if it is out of print or permission has been obtained from the copyright owner.
• The limit on communication does not apply to print copies so it may be possible to arrange for the Library or Murdoch Print to produce the material you need in print for distribution or sale to your students.
• If it is not possible to make your item available online then in the last resort it may be necessary to place the wanted volume in a print Reserve Collection.

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How can I link to library resources from my course web site without using the ECMS service?

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How do I link to electronic course material from my course web site?

All copyright course materials will automatically be placed in the Library's Electronic Collection and will be accessible via the Library system. They will be searchable by author, article/chapter title, keywords, course code and lecturer's name.

ECMS staff will supply you with the URL of your scanned document which you may use to create a link to the electronic document from your course web site.

URLs for your course web site can also be included in the listing of electronic unit materials on ECMS.

Please refer your students to the Library Home Page at http://wwwlib.murdoch.edu.au/ and then follow the links to the Electronic Course Materials. Murdoch members will be required to login using their student or staff number and Murdoch password.

Will traditional print Reserve Collections continue to exist?

As more material is made available electronically the need for traditional print Reserve Collections will decrease. However, they are unlikely to disappear entirely. There will always be a need to provide access under short loan conditions to high demand books as it will not usually be possible to digitize entire works.

The collections of photocopied articles in Reserve Collections are expected to disappear quite quickly as these articles are most likely to either be digitized and made available online or the Library will subscribe to full-text databases and will provide a link to the individual article or journal.

Will the Electronic Course Materials Service replace printed unit materials?

This may happen in time but in the interim it is anticipated that many divisions and schools will continue to produce printed unit materials for students. It is still probably cheaper for unit materials to be produced by Murdoch Print than for students to print out all the material from an online source. The Electronic Course Materials Service is particularly suitable for material you set for essays and assignments where online access is needed for a shorter period of time. Discuss the particular needs of your students with Library staff and with the staff of Murdoch Print.

Acknowledgement: Murdoch University Library wishes to acknowledge and thank the University of Wollongong for permission to use their Library Electronic Readings Service web site as the basis for this information guide. Thanks also to the University of Sydney Library for permission to use their Copyright Manual and Course Online Readings Service procedures to further develop this guide. Victoria University have also given permission for use of material from their website, and we thank them for that.