Copyright Licensing Agency and Ex Libris Collaborate to Facilitate Distribution of Digitized Content to Students
LONDON, UK, June 22, 2016 – Ex Libris®, a ProQuest company, and the UK’s Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA) are pleased to announce their collaboration on the Digital Content Store Content URL API. This collaboration will facilitate the integration of the Digital Content Store (DCS) with the Ex Libris Alma® resource management solution and Leganto reading list solution. Ex Libris is one of several partners aiding in the development of the DCS Content URL API.
The DCS is an innovative rights, technology, and content platform for higher education institutions (HEIs). The platform is currently under development by CLA along with HEIs, publishers, and technology partners. At its core, the DCS will include a searchable repository of PDF files (copies and extracts of materials digitized by HEIs), as well as a workflow-management tool. When an institution digitizes content under the CLA license, the PDF file will be uploaded directly to the DCS and will then be available for assignment to a course. Students will be able to access the file via a secure link to the DCS. Most importantly, instructors will be able to discover digitized content already uploaded by external institutions and to assign that content to courses.
With the new URL API, Alma and Leganto will retrieve URLs pointing to digitized content in the DCS, enabling instructors and students to access the links in Leganto reading lists. By making use of materials that other HEIs have already digitized, libraries will be spared the time and effort involved in digitizing materials for their own users.
Eela Devani, strategy and digital director of CLA, commented, “As part of CLA’s ongoing mission to make copyright clearance simpler for customers, we are working with Ex Libris to integrate its Leganto and Alma solutions with the Digital Content Store. This collaboration will save institutions significant time and effort by bringing together Leganto, Alma, and CLA’s new rights and content management platform—the DCS—providing one streamlined workflow-management tool.”
Asaf Kline, director of Alma product management at Ex Libris, explained, “The Alma and Leganto integration with the DCS continues the work that we did on the CLA’s Check Permissions tool API. This new integration will provide an end-to-end workflow, beginning with a content request in Leganto, continuing with approval and receipt of the material through Alma and the DCS API, and concluding with delivery to the institution’s students. The entire process will be carried out far more quickly and easily than was previously possible.”
About the Copyright Licensing Agency
Owned by the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society Ltd. (ALCS) and the Publishers’ Licensing Society Ltd. (PLS), the Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA) has been the recognized UK collective rights licensing body for text and images from print, electronic, and online books, journals, and magazines since 1983. On behalf of copyright owners—authors, publishers and visual artists—the CLA licenses organizations in the academic, professional, and public sectors to copy and reproduce extracts from digital and print publications.
About Ex Libris
Ex Libris, a ProQuest company, is a leading global provider of cloud-based solutions for higher education. Offering SaaS solutions for the management and discovery of the full spectrum of library and scholarly materials, as well as mobile campus solutions driving student engagement and success, Ex Libris serves thousands of customers in 90 countries. For more information about Ex Libris, see our website, and join us on Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
About ProQuest (http://www.proquest.com)
ProQuest connects people with vetted, reliable information. Key to serious research, the company’s products are a gateway to the world’s knowledge including dissertations, governmental and cultural archives, news, historical collections and ebooks. ProQuest technologies serve users across the critical points in research, helping them discover, access, share, create and manage information.
The company’s cloud-based technologies offer flexible solutions for librarians, students and researchers through the ProQuest®, Bowker®, Coutts® information services, Dialog®, ebrary®, EBL™, and SIPX® businesses – and notable research tools such as the Summon® discovery service, the RefWorks® citation and reference management platform, MyiLibrary® ebook platform, the Pivot® research development tool and Intota™. The company is headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with offices around the world.