Your Engagement with Keylinks

The Library is currently evaluating its Resource List service and is developing a number of enhancements. We are committed to providing a frictionless service that you can engage with easily, that provides you with high-quality support in the creation of student-centred resource lists, and that embeds parity of student experience across programmes.

As part of this process we are conducting a review of Canvas courses to identify how staff are using resource lists, and if they are engaging with the Resource List service or highlighting resources through other means. Your engagement with the service is vitally important in shaping our purchasing, directly students to the most current and diverse research in your field, and ensuring adequate materials in accessible formats for all students.

The information that we will be gathering for this part of the audit will be:

Does your Canvas course have a Keylinks Resource List enabled?
Is your list populated with content and is it up-to-date?
Are there non-Keylinks lists embedded elsewhere in your Canvas course?

If we discover a resource list that hasn’t previously been supplied to us for processing, we will contact you to check whether it is intended to be used for the new term. This is to ensure we have adequate resources to support your students.

Copyright Checking

We all share a responsibility to ensure that materials on Canvas comply with relevant copyright legislation. Hefty fines can be levied on an institution where, for example, journal articles or book chapters are uploaded to Canvas without going through the correct copyright clearance procedures. We will therefore also be using the review to check for potential copyright infringement in materials uploaded or linked-to in Canvas. These include:

Materials which fall under copyright but that have been scanned and uploaded by academic staff (ie. not requested through, and provided by, the Library)
Any scanned material should always be delivered through the library, and you should never scan and upload material to Canvas yourself. Nor should you link from Canvas to material hosted elsewhere which you have scanned yourself (i.e. via Dropbox, Google Drive etc.) Even if you are sure that something that you would like to scan is out of copyright you should still contact us to check that this is the case and we will complete the scan on your behalf with our specialised scanner to ensure that it is accessible for all students
Materials accessed using your GSA/GU credentials and then re-uploaded to Canvas as a PDF (ie. journal articles, ebook sections, and Kortext scans provided by the library)
Even if your students have access to this material through logging in with their GSA or GUID, you are not permitted to download the material and re-upload it as a PDF. These should always be hyperlinked so that students log in and authenticate themselves. If you are unsure how to do this please contact us at resourcelist@gsa.ac.uk
Linking to copyrighted material hosted on another website (some sites to look out for: Lib-Gen, Z-Library, Monoskop, Sci-Hub, Internet Archive Open Library.)
If you can access a whole book, chapter or article without using your GU/GSA login it is likely that this is a breach of copyright and should not be linked to. If you find material that you would like to link to check this with us at resourcelist@gsa.ac.uk
If you are using a third-party website like Google Drive or Dropbox to host this kind of material and linking to it from Canvas this is also a breach of copyright.

Do I Need to Do Anything?

If, after reading through the criteria, above you are aware of any potential copyright breaches in your Canvas course and course documents please take the time to remove these. If you are unsure if something breaches copyright, or you need help sourcing the material through alternative means, please get in contact with us at ResourceList@gsa.ac.uk and we will be happy to support you.

We will conducting the review from the beginning of June. You will receive an email to let you know when we have begun reviewing your Canvas course, and once the review is complete, we will send you details of how many items were removed (if applicable).

Additional support for students and staff

We recognise that staff often provide readings directly to students in PDF format where students experience difficulty navigating the providers’ authentication systems. We are in the process of creating some instructional resources which will be available soon. We would also be happy to host a session with your students to support them in their use of external platforms. If this would be helpful please contact B.WinterBurke@gsa.ac.uk