Scan and Deliver

You can request digital scans of book chapters and journal articles from the Library print collections, within certain copyright limits. If you see a ‘Scan and Deliver (digitised extract not full copy)’ link on the item record in DiscoverEd, the item is available to be scanned.

Copyright legislation allows us to provide:

• one article in any one issue of a journal
• a reasonable proportion of any other published work

'A reasonable proportion' is generally taken as being one chapter or 10% (whichever is the greater) of a book, and one short story or poem or play of not more than ten pages in an anthology. You can request extracts within these limits. However, there may be exceptional cases where an extract cannot be supplied, e.g. where one chapter comprises a substantial proportion of a book.

Scans provided by the Library may not be shared or used for teaching. See below for guidance on requesting teaching material.

Scan requests can be made for items held at the following University Libraries:

• Main Library
• Art & Architecture Library
• Edinburgh College of Art Library
• Law Library
• Moray House Library
• New College Library
• Noreen and Kenneth Murray Library (Murray Library)
• Royal Infirmary Library
• Scottish Studies Archives & Library
• The Lady Smith of Kelvin Veterinary Library
• University Collections Facility

Heritage Collections have their own digitisation service.

Submit your scan request using DiscoverEd. 

• Search for the item you would like us to scan.
• Ensure you have signed in, either using the 'Sign in' button at the top right of the DiscoverEd search page, or when prompted in the 'Find It In Library' section of the item record.
• If Scan and Deliver is an option there will be a link on the item record, ‘Scan and Deliver (digitised extract not full copy)’.
• Follow the link and provide the information requested.
• Read the copyright declaration and check the box to agree to the copyright terms. The box must be checked before you can submit your scan request.

You will be asked to provide a chapter title/number, author and page numbers. Be aware that page numbers may vary with editions. There is a comments box where you can add any other relevant information.

If you don’t know the page numbers or chapter title required, try checking bookseller or publishers’ websites for table of contents information, or request a scan of the table of contents from Scan and Deliver in the first instance.

There is no limit on the overall number of requests that you can make, but you can have only four requests active at any one time. You can see details of any current Scan and Deliver requests on your DiscoverEd user account.

You will receive an automated notification from the Library to your University email account which contains a secure link to the scan and a case-sensitive password. 

The link will expire after 30 days and there is a five download limit on the link.

The scans provided by Scan and Deliver are for personal use only. Course Organisers should continue to request scans for teaching using the Resource List service. For any other enquiries concerning the use of scans in teaching please contact E-reserve.

If you have any queries regarding requesting scans, or have any issues with scans which you have received please contact EdHelp.