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Oxford Reading Lists Online (ORLO): Digitisations

Bodleian Libraries Digitisation Service

The Bodleian Libraries provide a digitisation service on behalf of the University. A digitisation (also known as a scan) is often one chapter/article or up to 10% per item, whichever is greater, and eligible under the CLA licence. These can be requested directly from an ORLO list and then the Bodleian Libraries will organise a digitisation to be created and uploaded. Scans of book chapters must be requested through the digitisation service to comply with copyright law. If the digitisation cannot be created under the CLA licence, a member of ORLO staff will investigate other routes (please see the 'ORLO digitisation routes' PDF below) within copyright restrictions. You will be contacted if the digitisation cannot be made.

How to request a digitisation from an ORLO list

  • Before requesting a digitisation, please check that there is no electronic copy available via SOLO. Link to the electronic copy if available.
  • If there is no electronic copy, bookmark the SOLO print record (see the bookmarking page). Click title on the ORLO bookmark to open up the citation.
  • Select the Request digitisation option at the bottom of the citation. If there is no such option, this means that there is no Course Record for the list, and one will need to be created. Please see the Course Records tab for next steps. 
  • In the digitisation request form, please enter the details about the specific chapter/article or pages that you would like to be scanned. When you have filled in as much information as possible, click Submit.
  • The dates for the digitisation and student numbers will auto-filled if you added these details to the list when you created it. Please see the Admin and List creation page for further details.
  • Submit the request. You will receive an automatic message either stating that your request has been successful or referred for manual checking. A librarian will be in touch should your request be rejected to explain why and the next steps.

Upload a File

The 'Upload a File' service in ORLO is intended for unpublished material, such as lecture notes and transcripts. You will be asked to complete a copyright declaration upon each upload, and Bodleian Libraries Staff will check each file for copyright compliance. Files that do not comply will be removed.

Items available online and/or via library subscriptions should always be linked to directly; please do not download pdfs and upload them to the Upload a File service, as these will be removed.

It should not be used in place of the ORLO Digitisation Service; if you are unable to see a 'Request Digitization' button, then it is likely you haven't yet requested a Course Record. Please fill in our Course Record Request form.

Top tips

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  • Deleting a bookmark: Before deleting a bookmark from an ORLO list, please check if it has a digitisation attached to it. If so, then please inform your ORLO Library Rep or orlo@bodleian.ox.ac.uk that you will be removing this bookmark and so the link to the digitisation so that they can manually withdraw the scan in the back system too. 
  • Reference pages: If you have the page numbers available to you, please separate the pages of the content and the bibliographic references into the separate parts of the request form by clicking + Page range to add the extra page range (as shown in the screenshot below). If you are requesting multiple page ranges (up to 10%) please use the same function. It is not compulsory to include the reference pages in the request form.
  • Use + Note if you have any explanatory notes for the digitisation team.

Ask the library for a digital copy popup