CLA's 'licensing solution of the future'

The Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA) has launched what it describes as 'the licensing solution of the future' with a system aimed at speeding up and streamlining digitisation for higher education institutions.

The CLA says the Digital Content Store (DCS) platform, developed in conjunction with software experts Cloudspring Technologies, will revolutionise the current labour intensive process associated with declaring digital copies and scans to CLA. The DCS web-based hosted solution will enable users to research, record and monitor all digital book chapters and journal articles and ultimately help HEIs reduce the risk and potential cost of copyright infringement.

Adopting the new DCS platform will not require any additional investment from HEIs as it will form part of the service provided through the standard annual CLA Higher Education Licence. Designed specifically for the sector, the Higher Education Licence provides annual blanket permissions to photocopy and scan from millions of books, journals and magazines and from a range of digital material such as e-books and some websites.

Meghan Mazella, product manager at the CLA, said: 'All HEIs have to report every digital copy and scan they supply to students on an annual basis and up until now there has been no uniform process in place to monitor what is being used. HEIs currently use a variety of methods, including spreadsheets or sending out emails to colleagues to gather the relevant information.
 
'This has been a real burden for HEIs. We have been in constant consultation with the sector for several years to understand their pain-points and have used this knowledge to develop a solution that will help them to deliver and access content quickly and cost effectively.'