This section of the report concerns activities and progress made by SCOPE in relation to the project proposal and SCOPE's contract with eLib. It identifies the achievements of the project team subsequent to the Year 2 Annual Report.

1.1 Major activities undertaken by the project

• Keeping abreast of development on copyright issues relating to electronic media.
• Participating in debate with stakeholder groups on issues raised by on-demand publishing in electronic libraries, via electronic mailing lists, and at relevant conferences and workshops.
• Identifying rightsholders for material targeted for SCOPE use.
• Negotiating terms on which SCOPE may use an expanded range of copyright materials; the range of sociology materials was increased in depth and other subject areas were added to those materials.
• Extending copyright clearance activity to meet the demands of courses taking advantage of the extension of the project to 31 July 1998.

• Working with Library Representatives to identify courses suitable for SCOPE resources and to supply reading lists to the copyright unit in the correct format and on schedule.
• Liaising with academics and librarians to supply materials of a sufficiently high quality for digitisation.
• Liaising with Library Representatives over evaluation.

• Digitising, formatting, and proof-reading copyright materials to be included in course packs and in the SCOPE electronic resource bank.
• Participating in debate with stakeholder groups on issues raised by on-demand publishing in electronic libraries, via electronic mailing lists, and at relevant conferences.
• Producing course packs from hard copy and from electronic copy received directly from copyright holders.
• Mounting and delivering material online.

• Presenting SCOPE findings at relevant fora and thus generating feedback from all stakeholder groups.
• Submitting papers to journals and magazines as appropriate.
• Raising the profile of the project in electronic discussion as appropriate.
• Maintaining up-to-date web pages.
• Reporting regularly to Scottish Confederation of University and Research Library (SCURL) representatives.
• Organising and holding meetings of representatives from SCOPE Consortium Member Institutions (CMIs).
• See Appendix VII and Appendix VIII

• In accordance with the SCOPE Evaluation Plan, conducting and co-ordinating focus groups and structured interviews, and administering questionnaires as appropriate with a view to monitoring the impact of SCOPE on all stakeholder groups. Evaluation activities focused on resources supplied to students during Year 3 in both printed course pack and online format.

• The project had explored the possibility of continuing a SCOPE-type service, delivering texts to students within Scotland from a central resource bank. It was clear, however, that continued funding would be required until copyright clearance procedures could be streamlined and a critical mass of materials developed for sharing amongst universities. It appeared that no funding would be available from SHEFC. However, a successful bid was made in response to eLib's call for applications for extension funding to develop a national on-demand service. Stirling and Napier Universities (lead partners in SCOPE) and South Bank University (a PHOENIX partner), together with Blackwell's Retail Bookshops and Blackwell's Information Services will develop a national (UK-wide) service, Higher Education Resources ON-demand (HERON). It will not offer a direct service to students but will allow universities to develop their own on-demand and electronic (OD/ER) services, and aims to be self-supporting within three years.
  See Appendix XIV

This has involved SCOPE in transitional activities to allow interim continuation of existing eLib on-demand projects, with a grant of £2,200 to employ the necessary additional assistance.

1.2 Effects of any changes made to the project plan in the light of the experience of the second year of the project and indicated in The Year 2 Annual Report

• The project was extended to 31 July 1998, in order to reassure academics that their participation in SCOPE in the early part of 1998 would be worthwhile, and that their courses would be supported until the end of the academic year. This allowed more courses to be serviced and more detailed evaluation of usage patterns to be carried out.

• The SCOPE Year 2 Annual Report indicated that SCOPE would offer individual students the opportunity to select course-pack contents from a wide range of resources available and to order a course pack which would be delivered to them within 24 hours. This was investigated and, following discussion of the issues involved, was not implemented. See 1.3.2.4

• The SCOPE Year 2 Annual Report indicated that SCOPE would seek to re-negotiate SCOPE-publisher contracts before the project end date with a view to establishing SCOPE as a service beyond the project time frame. As the project's exit strategy was developed, it became clear that renegotiation requirements for the continuing service would apply to all eLib project agreements. It was therefore decided that only those agreements due to terminate before 31 July 1998 would be extended to the end of the SCOPE project, leaving renegotiation to be reviewed by the future service.

• The SCOPE Year 2 Annual Report indicated that dissemination would probably be undertaken in co-operation with other eLib ODP/electronic reserve projects. There was less time for such joint activities than had been anticipated, due to the amount of staff time taken up by the preparation of the exit strategy. However, there was significant collaboration with other projects in the preparation of the exit strategy, and considerable dissemination of the project's results took place in tandem with promotion of the HERON project during the last few months of SCOPE's operation.

• Evaluation of Stage 6 products and services and liaison with the CMIs developed into a more centralised activity than had been envisaged, due to lack of time in CMIs. This actually led to greater consistency and efficiency in the analysis of evaluation activities.

• The evolving requirements for the use of metadata by eLib projects was monitored and the implementation of such data was investigated. It was felt that this issue would be fully actioned by the HERON project.

1.3 The main objectives or targets during the period and how far the project team has been successful in meeting them

1.3.1 Year 3 general objectives

1.3.1.1 TO NEGOTIATE CONTRACTS WITH ADDITIONAL PUBLISHERS. This has been achieved. As at July 1998 the following figures were available:

SCOPE contracts signed
	by publishers	41
	by authors (or their agents or estate)	23
Non-SCOPE agreements		30
Total collaborating rightsholders		94

1.3.1.2 TO EXTEND THE PROJECT INTO MORE CMIS

This has been achieved. SCOPE produced material for the following CMIs at their request:

Aberdeen

Abertay

Glasgow

Glasgow Caledonian

Napier

Queen Margaret College

St Andrews

Stirling

1.3.1.3 TO PREPARE A FINAL EXIT STRATEGY

This has been achieved. HERON was chosen to consolidate the work of all the eLib OD/ER projects, to be self-supporting within three years.
See Appendix XIV

1.3.2 Year 3 technical objectives

1.3.2.1 TO OFFER ONLINE DELIVERY OF RECOMMENDED TEXTS FOR SPECIFIC READING LISTS

This has been achieved. SCOPE made material available for online delivery to the following courses:

1.3.2.2 TO OFFER ELECTRONIC TEXTS TO CMIS AS PROVIDED BY PUBLISHERS AND BEYOND WHAT IS REQUIRED FOR SPECIFIC READING LISTS

This has been achieved.
A selection of 5 previously-published MBA texts was offered in electronic format by one publisher, who wished to assess the viability of producing ready-digitised material for on-demand services such as SCOPE. The project ran a survey throughout CMIs to assess potential demand, and it emerged that the subject area was not one in which this publisher's material was heavily used. However, both parties felt the exercise to be worthwhile, and for SCOPE it provided an opportunity to investigate the technical aspects of handling such material (most of our work has been with printed material, requiring digitisation by the project). With the publisher's co-operation, a token copyright fee of 1p per page printed was set (this was subsidised by the project, thus making the material effectively free of charge to the CMIs). Publicity materials were provided by the publisher and SCOPE, and sent by SCOPE to all Library Representatives for distribution to the appropriate Heads of Department. This elicited limited interest from academic and library staff at three CMIs.
See Appendix XV

1.3.2.3 TO DEMONSTRATE THE FEASIBILITY OF LINKS FROM OPACS

SCOPE is able to provide libraries with URLs for all documents for inclusion in web-based OPACs. These links would take the user to a bibliographic reference page. If the user wished to go beyond that information, all the CACTUS security features would be activated.

Some web-based OPAC systems may allow extracts to be listed together with the host document, although the actual process of storing suitable OPAC records may prove more problematic for libraries.

SCOPE did some research into the current use of links from OPACs to electronic reserve, with the following results: -
• some use of URL in catalogue
• some notes in catalogue e.g. 'also in electronic reserve'
• some separate catalogue for electronic reserve
• some link from course pages directly to electronic reserve
A major consideration is whether the texts are licensed for access by all library users or only by specific classes of students.

This work will continue into the HERON project.

1.3.2.4 TO DEVELOP LOCAL CUSTOMISED PRINTING

At the end of Stage 5 of the project, it was proposed that the SCOPE team would endeavour to offer customised course pack production on demand before the end of the project. Investigations up to that point had identified a number of significant problems relating to access, production and distribution. Further discussion during Stage 6 led to the decision - ratified by Project Board - that an attempt to implement customised printing would impinge on other more urgent and immediately useful work. Therefore the SCOPE team presents the findings of their research, and consider they will be of value to any future service seeking to address this issue.
See Appendix XVI

1.3.2.5 TO INVESTIGATE THE FEASIBILITY OF OFFERING A SERVICE TO THE VISUALLY HANDICAPPED

SCOPE approached a number of institutions, projects and individuals involved in adapting texts for visually-impaired users. It was possible to identify some of the requirements which an on-demand service would need to meet in order to provide for these users. At the moment, solutions are very dependent on the level of funds, resource and equipment available in individual institutions, whilst specific research seems to be producing an array of possibilities. The situation is fast changing. For an on-demand service, each solution will have implications for copyright clearance, production processes and delivery.
See Appendix XIX

1.3.2.6 TO FIND A MEANS OF ARCHIVING SCOPE RESOURCES, TAKING INTO ACCOUNT COPYRIGHT AND SECURITY ISSUES

The SCOPE Model Contract was adjusted to include a 'non-use retention' clause:

"On expiry or termination of this Agreement for any reason (other than due to breach of contract) SU shall:
1. return or destroy as PL shall instruct all human readable versions of the material;
2. subject to (iii) below, cease to distribute or make available, whether in electronic or printed form, the whole or any part of the material;
3. deposit in a depository for machine readable data to be mutually agreed by PL and SU all machine readable versions of The Work, including partial copies and modifications made in accordance with this Agreement and shall certify in writing, within 30 days of termination, that the same has been done.
PL shall have the right to appoint an independent auditor at its own expense to verify such actions. Neither SU, nor PL shall have the right to remove or to copy any machine readable version of the material held in the agreed depository without the express agreement in writing of the other party."

This was accepted by the large majority of rightsholders approached by SCOPE.

All digitised documents are stored in FrameMaker 5 format, unless created in some other application in which case they remain in that application's format.

No digitised SCOPE electronic resource is accessible by network or dial-in connection.

Further details of archiving arrangements will be concluded by the HERON project, which is investigating the notion of Trusted Archive Status on behalf of the HE sector.

1.3.2.7 TO FURTHER DEVELOP THE ONLINE DELIVERY SYSTEM IN THE LIGHT OF WHAT WE LEARN OF STAKEHOLDERS' REQUIREMENTS

The following have been achieved:
• Cross-platform compatibility of CACTUS, the SCOPE ERMS - development of the online delivery software was commissioned. It is now operational on Unix, Windows 3.1, Windows 95, NT and Macintosh platforms. See Appendix XI

• SCOPE plug-in development to facilitate selective printing - the SCOPE ERMS was developed with a bias towards the perceived requirements of rightsholders, with the smallest printable unit being the whole document as presented by the SCOPE resource bank. Following perceived demand for the option to select and print a single page or a range of pages, further development of the plug-in was investigated and costings obtained. See Appendix XVII

  Security feature development to allow access to materials across all CMIs - in order to facilitate printing of some SCOPE documents by unregistered users (MBA texts) it was necessary to devise some additional routines.

  The material was listed separately in HTML pages rather than by database lookup. These pages pointed to documents which could be accessed by users within CMIs. A counting routine monitored usage. See Appendix XV

• Authentication feature development to allow access to distance learners - the SCOPE Technical Unit has written a set of routines asking users for identification by institution, username and password on their first attempt to access the service. This enables full authentication of individual users at a much earlier stage than with the usual system, with the appropriate view-and-print authorisation being given at the same time as access to all reading lists. See Appendix XVIII

1.3.3 Year 3 evaluation and dissemination objectives
1.3.3.1 TO EVALUATE THE PRODUCTS AND PROCESSES IN STAGE 6

This has been achieved.


See:	Appendix X Appendix XI Appendix XII

1.3.3.2 TO CONTINUE TO BE ACTIVE IN PROMOTING SCOPE AND IN DISSEMINATING INFORMATION ON PROJECT PROGRESS TO ALL STAKEHOLDERS

This has been achieved. Highlights include:
• rightsholders event
• OD/ER projects seminar
• eLib managers presentation
• SCOPE Library Representatives meetings
• development and promotion of the SCOPE web site
  See Appendix VIII for details

1.3.3.3 TO UNDERTAKE MARKET RESEARCH TO INFORM OUR PROPOSALS FOR FUNDING AFTER YEAR 3

This has been achieved.
Marketing students at the University of Stirling were commissioned to carry out a survey on the attitudes of academic staff towards on-demand publishing. Five HE institutions were involved. The subject areas covered were: Management, Nursing and Midwifery, Sociology.

The research was useful in a number of ways, in that it:
• confirmed many of the SCOPE team's own findings
• suggested that early problems with course packs had largely been sorted out and that there was greater satisfaction with more recent recipients
• provided a list of useful contacts e.g. in Nursing and Midwifery, which was confirmed as a promising area
• suggested the existence of much untapped demand
• illustrated the general lack of awareness among academic staff of the issues involved in costs and pricing, areas in which better understanding must be created
• illustrated the very divergent views and expectations with regard to IT facilities in HEIs. It will be important to be able to advise academics and support services in HEIs on appropriate levels of support and equipment.

1.4 Outputs produced from SCOPE activities (such as prototypes, models, demonstrator services, actual services, events, reports etc.)

• Agreements for licensing on-demand publishing in SCOPE CMIs with a total of 94 rightsholders.

• Service Level Agreements with CMIs
  See Appendix XIII

• Electronic resource bank comprising:

  Documents supplied in electronic form by Publisher:
  71 text PDF files
  Total pages: 1483
  Largest file: 55 pages

  Documents produced in image-PDF format:
  19 PDF files
  Total pages: 143
  Largest file: 37 pages

  Documents OCRd by SCOPE:
  225 text PDF files
  Total pages: 2866
  Largest file: 61 pages

  Total original document pages: 3880

  See Appendix XI

• Permission was gained and material prepared for online delivery at 5 institutions, covering 11 courses. Of these 5 institutions, only 2 delivered materials to the students (6 courses). Two institutions were technically capable of delivery, but the service was not used due to lack of promotion by CMIs to the students and availability of material from traditional library sources (4 courses). One institution had to withdraw from participation due to lack of staff time. Course packs were used on 8 courses at 4 CMIs.
  See 1.3.2.1

• Course packs: the packs produced ranged from entirely institutional/author copyright through to entirely commercial copyright, with one pack containing a significant amount of public domain material.
  • Business Applications Software: material comprised of lecturer-written materials; rights held by authors.

  • Economics: material consisted of lecturer-written material; rights held by author.

  • Engineering (b and c): material consisted of lecturer-written material and extracts from one out of print book; rights held by University and publisher.

  • Philosophy: 10 items: 8 book extracts, 2 journal articles; rights held by three publishers, seven public domain items. Initial list included details of alternative sources for extracts: the final choice was determined by the speed at which publishers responded and their price. The public domain material was substituted for material by a publisher who would not give permission.

  • Sociology(a): 9 items: all book extracts; rights held by: one author, one editor, one agent, four publishers. Initial list of twelve items requested, six items dropped due to four non co-operative-operative publishers. Additional six extracts supplied. List prioritised to eleven extracts, one dropped due to high pictorial content, one dropped to keep price to acceptable level.

  • Sociology(b and c) pack 1: 11 items: 8 book chapters, 3 journal articles; rights held by eleven publishers. Remaindered packs from previous years.

  • Sociology(b and c) pack 2: 13 items: 10 book chapters, 3 journal articles; rights held by nine publishers. Remaindered packs from previous years.

  • Sociology(b and c) pack 3: 14 items: 12 book chapters, 2 journal articles; rights held by nine publishers and three authors. Remaindered packs from previous years.

• Online delivery
  • Biology: 8 items: 1 journal extract, 7 newspaper extracts. Rights held by four publishers. Initial list of 21 items requested, thirteen items dropped due to three non co-operative publishers, no substitution made

  • Communication and Information Science: 7 items: six book extracts, one journal article. Rights held by 6 publishers. Initial list of ten items requested, three items dropped due to two non co-operative publishers, no substitution made.

  • Electronic Information and Society: 16 items: 5 book extracts, 11 journal articles. Rights held by 8 publishers and 2 authors. Initial list of 20 items, 4 dropped due to 3 non co-operative publishers, no substitutions made.

  • Engineering(a): 2 items: 1 out of print workbook, 1 extract. Rights held by publishers. Initial request for five items, 3 dropped due to non co-operative publishers.

  • English Literature: 8 items: 4 book extracts, 4 journal articles. Rights held by 4 publishers. Initial list of 24 items requested, thirteen dropped due to 2 non co-operative publishers, 1 publisher having copyright fees which were too expensive, 5 untraceable rightsholders, no substitutions made.

  • Sociology(b and c) online: 11 items: 8 book chapters, 3 journal articles; rights held by eight publishers. Initial list of thirteen extracts requested, two dropped due to two non co-operative publishers, no substitutions made.

  • Sociology(d): 24 items: 18 book extracts, 3 journal articles, 3 official publication extracts. Rights held by 14 publishers, one author, one executor, three public domain items. Initial list of 12 items requested, 18 extra requested as additional reading, six items dropped due to three non co-operative publishers, no substitution made.

  • Sociology(e): 45 items: 42 book extracts, 3 journal articles. Rights held by 19 publishers and 3 authors. Initial list of 67 items, 20 dropped due to 15 non co-operative publishers, 2 dropped due to untraceable rightsholders. No substitutions made.

  • Sociology(f): 10 items from Sociology(d), 6 book extracts, 3 journal articles, 1 official publication. Rights held by 7 publishers, one public domain.

  • Women's Studies: 16 items: all book extracts. Rights held by 2 publishers, 6 authors (6 negotiated through literary agents) two public domain extracts. Initial list of 32 book extracts, 1 dropped due to 1 non co-operative publisher, 1 dropped due to high cost of permission, 1 dropped due to untraceable rightsholders, 13 unresolved due to 6 non-responsive publishers and 2 agents. No substitutions made.

• Cross-platform development of the online delivery software, to run on Unix, Windows 3.1, Windows 95, NT and Macintosh.
  See Appendix XI

• Dissemination and evaluation activities
  See 1.3.3.2

• In accordance with the PRINCE project management model, all SCOPE activities are documented thoroughly; copies of the resulting reports are sent to the JISC and a selection mounted on the Web (http://www.stir.ac.uk/infoserv/scope/docs/).

1.5 Particular successes to report

• Online delivery
  This met with an enthusiastic response. It was obvious that student take-up of the service was very dependent on direct promotion by lecturers, backed up by introductory training. This is indeed the case with the majority of information services available to students, whatever their format or benefit.
  'Despite all the teething problems, the SCOPE on-line experiment has to be judged a success. It must also be noted that the potential is much greater than the initial achievements on unit 47JF might suggest'. (lecturer)

• Trade publishers' and literary agents' co-operation
  In this final year of the project one reading list presented the opportunity of approaching a number of trade publishers for copyright clearance for on-demand delivery of texts. Although tracing rightsholders proved in many cases to be a lengthy and convoluted process, it was encouraging to note the generally positive response from this section of the publishing industry, despite the fact that some literary agents are not yet fully conversant with the issue of electronic rights.

  This represented good progress from the situation in Year 1 of the project, when the Annual Report stated that trade publishers were less interested than academic publishers in the academic information chain. In Year 3 trade publishers expressed considerable interest in what the project was trying to achieve.

  As in Year 1, trade publishers and literary agents (in particular) expressed a strong preference for a short, simple licence or even letter of permission, rather than the lengthy and complicated SCOPE contract. However, this did not lead any publisher refusing to co-operate, and the SCOPE Copyright Officer worked with a degree of flexibility on this point.

  On the whole, SCOPE's approaches to the trade sector in Year 3 were much better received than in Year 1, when:

  'Because trade publishers believe that they stand to gain little in terms of revenue from SCOPE, their interest in negotiating on price is negligible. They are prepared to view SCOPE as a threat to sales of originals however, and refuse permissions on these grounds whereas an academic publisher with more to gain in terms of revenue and more to lose in terms of opportunity is prepared to debate this issue before making a decision.'

• Reduction in time required for copyright clearance process
  It became possible during the third year of the project to give a general indication of the period required to clear up to two thirds of a reading list (approx. eight weeks). This is a considerable improvement on previous stages, where rightsholders' reactions to the concept of on-demand delivery were more likely to be hostile than receptive. We feel that the potential benefits of clearing material for use by on-demand services are becoming clearer to rightsholders, and that SCOPE, by showing the level of security which can be achieved, has played a significant part in this change of attitude. However for take-up of OD/ER to be widespread, lead times for the whole process (clearing and digitising complete reading lists) must equal or better those associated with traditional short loan provision.

• Exit strategy
  The work of the project in bringing the benefits of on-demand services to both rightsholders and HE users, through a 'real-world' approach demonstrated the potential of on-demand services, which was recognised by funding for the development of a future service, HERON.
  See Appendix XIV

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