NEWS


CLA’s licensing solution of the future


T


he 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


‘The new DCS platform will not require any additional investment from HEIs’


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 both quickly and cost-effectively.’


The DCS can be used in any browser with no installation requirements. Designed for use by librarians, the list of requests from academics and lecturers at each HEI can be entered into the system and searched for on the bibliographic database.


The request workflow will automate a range of checks on the selected material – from confirming whether the book or article is included in the CLA repertoire, to checking the extent limits by highlighting extracts already used and calculating the percentage of the book being used. The CLA says DCS is able to connect to two major library management systems to explore whether the specific book or journal is held in the library catalogue and check the ownership, which is a requirement of the licence.


Semantico competition winners announced


Semantico has announced the winners of its annual competition for second-year University of Sussex software engineering students. With a winning project of a fully- functioning ant world simulation, the winners saw off stiff competition to win the prize of £200 towards a meal out in Brighton, and the opportunity to interview for a paid summer internship programme at Semantico.


The winning team comprised Joseph Kimberley, Vasyl Kodre, Hui Ling Lee, James Twisleton, Matthew Weller and John Wilkie.


Software engineering course leader at the University of Sussex, Kingsley Sage, said: ‘Their submission demonstrated a good commitment to working as a team and, in particular, showed that they were able to apply good software engineering practice to


20 Research Information AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2016


deliver a quality software product.’ The competition was created to support and nurture the top local software engineering talent; previous winners include current Semantico employees such as technical team lead James Baxter.


Pictured left to right are Jianrong Chen, chief technology officer at Semantico; Matthew Weller; James Twisleton; John Wilkie; and Kingsley Sage, software engineering course leader at Sussex University.


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