Digitisation service (staff)

The Birkbeck Library digitisation service scans printed material and provides links to digital material for use by teaching staff in Moodle modules, in order to ensure Birkbeck complies with copyright law. 

Copyright restrictions 

Printed material: you should not upload material you have scanned yourself to your Moodle module unless you have permission from the rights holder. The Library can scan this material for you, which ensures we are legally compliant. 

We are only allowed to scan:

• one chapter or no more than 10% of a book (whichever is the greater) 
• one article from a journal issue or no more than 10% (whichever is the greater). 

If you request more than this, we will only provide the first chapter/article on your list. 

Digital material: you should not upload PDF of ejournals or ebooks to your Moodle module, as this breaches the licences we hold. Instead, you should create stable links to ejournal articles - see below for information on how to do this. 

Find out more about what you are legally allowed to copy. 

Browse our Digitisation Service

Requesting our services 

• New readings: To request scanned readings and links to digital material (ejournals and ebooks) for your module’s key readings. Complete the form located in My Birkbeck for staff, select Menu, then Library Services, and then select Library Digitisation Request.  
  • If left inactive for an hour the web form will timeout. All requests submitted before the timeout will have been received by the Library. 
  • If you have any questions about the form, contact the Digitisation team. 
  • We will email you links to embed in your Moodle module. 
  • You can embed the links on a Moodle page or in a Word document that you then upload to Moodle. 
  • Watch a video explaining how to embed a link in a Moodle page. 
• Re-using previously digitised material: please contact the Digitisation Team directly - you don't have to make these requests via the web form. Simply provide the original Moodle module course code and the new course code you intend to re-use them in.

Deadlines 

• You can submit requests  at any time, but we can only guarantee readings by the start of term if requests have been submitted by the following dates: 
  • Autumn term 2024: 9 August 2024
  • Spring term 2025: 1 November 2024
  • Summer term 2025: 1 March 2025

CREATING LINKS TO digital resources 

• You can request links to digital resources via the web form. Alternatively, you can create these yourself, but they need to be stable, which means you can't simply copy a URL/hyperlink from your web browser. 
• Find out how to create stable links to digital resources. This process takes a little more time, but it will significantly reduce the number of broken links on Moodle and related queries from students. 

accessibility for disabled and dyslexic students

• Moodle: materials digitised by the Library for Moodle are formatted as readable PDFs. Text can be copied and pasted, read aloud with text-to-speech software and annotations can be made. If it is not sufficiently accessible for a print impaired reader, the PDF may be further processed with Sensus Access.
• Contact us: email the Library's Disability and Dyslexia Support Team for help and support with providing accessible readings and textbooks.
• Find out more about producing accessible teaching materials for disabled and dyslexic students.