This article details some of the core concepts and terminology used in Talis Aspire Digitised Content (TADC).
Key stakeholders
- Universities
- The aims of the institution are to make sure students have timely access to copyright cleared material, efficient use of staff time and compliance with relevant copyright licenses and legislation.
- Licensing Agencies (RROs)
- The aim of the licensing agencies is to assist member institutions in determining what resources can be copyright cleared, and to help ensure compliance.
- Supply Agencies
- These agencies supply scans to institutions. These agencies include services such as the the BL scanning service.
System entities
- Requests
- A request for digitisation contains:
- Metadata about the resource
- Information about the course inc. student numbers
- Date range the request covers
- Information about the requester
- Scan
- The scan is a digitisation of the relevant part of the resource in its raw form, before any relevant coversheet has been attached. Scans may be uploaded by the requester, or located later (uploaded by a librarian, sourced from BL, sourced from other institution)
- Bundles
- A digitised bundle comprises:
- The scan with any relevant coversheet attached
- A url at which the scan can be securely downloaded
- A time period
- Reports
- Reports can be exported by librarians. Report types could include audit submissions to the licensing agency, bundle usage reports or other management information.
System components
- Concierge
- The concierge accepts and validates digitisation requests. Some requests can be validated instantly, others will need human interaction from library experts to be validated. Once validated, the concierge helps locate the digitised file, before passing onto the packer.
- Packer
- Once a request has been validated, the packer bundles together the scan, coversheet (if applicable) and an access point and places the digitised bundle into the vault.
- Vault
- The vault securely stores bundles. Each institution has its own vault. Files are stored securely, and users can never see or access the vault directly - for access, they must go via the sentry. When the concierge matches a request with an existing request for which there is a bundle in the vault, the attached PDF will be re-used to create a bundle for the new request.
- Sentry
- The only way of accessing the vault is via the sentry. The sentry securely authenticates users, and makes sure the right people can download content at the correct time.
- Report runner
- The report runner generates management reports such as the audit report (for submission to the licensing agency) and item usage reports.
User classes
- Academics
- Academics submit requests for digitised content. They interact with mainly with the concierge.
- Library staff
- Library staff are involved when the concierge cannot give academics an instant decision on clearance. They use their skill and judgement to manually verify requests. Depending on local practice they may also upload scans into the system. In addition library staff interact with the report runner to file audit reports and extract management reports.
- Students
- Students access content from TADC via the sentry, which will authenticate them securely.