Sussex Library online reading lists guide

Requesting a digitisation

A digitisation is a scanned digital copy of printed material. 

Digitisations are required to make short sections of printed material - such as a chapter within a printed book, or a single article from a print-only journal - available to students digitally. The printed material is scanned or “digitised”, and uploaded and linked to the item on the reading list. 

If the material you require is already available in digital format a digitisation is not required. See the Adding items to your list section for more. 

Digitisations during lockdown

We cannot guarantee to fulfill digitisation requests of print books at this time, as access to our scanners is not possible while the Library building remains closed. If the extract is available electronically, this will expedite the process, but each item’s copyright status must be checked individually so please allow plenty of time for this process. Once we are back in the building we can digitise either one chapter or 10% of most books (whichever's greater), with the possibility to pay for a 2nd extract.

How much can we digitise?

The library can digitise any material under the terms of our CLA Scanning Licence. The licensing is complex but means that we are usually able to reproduce either:

• A single chapter from a book (or two, if copyright permissions and funds allow)
• 10% of the total page numbers of the book
• A single article from a journal.
•  Please see our Copyright page for more information. 

We will either scan the item internally or obtain a copyright fee-paid copy from the British Library, then link the digitised item to your reading list.The digitisation opens in a online document viewer called Kortext, which enables students to read on-screen, download or print the article. 

How to request a digitisation

Digitisations cannot be done instantly, so please allow the same amount of time as you would for a book purchase request, ie: at least 3 weeks.

Please indicate in the 'Note for Students' section on your reading list if you want your students to read a digitised single chapter or article.

Go to the three-dot menu next to the item and click on 'Note for students':

Add the page numbers, chapter or article name/details and the text: 'PLEASE DIGITISE' in the note field. 

Click Save.