Document Supply Policy: Home

Purpose of Document Supply
Document Supply provides UCA UK campus based students and staff with access to books, journal articles and other academic publications that are not available in the University Library collection, either electronically or physically. Resources that are available at another UCA campus library can be requested using for the Click & Collect service.

Academic staff who require extracts scanned from published books and journals for use in teaching should use the Reading List Service. Staff who require resources to support commercially-funded research should contact the Library’s Digitisation Service for advice. 

Compliance
Resources provided through Document Supply are provided for personal academic study and non-commercial research use only. Use of these resources for commercial purposes - such as for research funded by a profit-seeking organisation - is prohibited by copyright law and all users will be required to agree to a copyright declaration acknowledging this.

Reuse of content from Document Supply resources in other publications is also prohibited unless permission has been granted separately from the copyright owner through a rights clearance process.

Eligibility
The service is open to UK campus based -

• higher education students (undergraduate and Masters)
• research students (PhD/MPhil)
• staff

Types of resources that can be requested
The service can supply the following types of resources -

• books and book chapters
• journal articles
• published conference papers
• doctoral theses

Fees
Document Supply items that are not returned by the stated due date will be subject to fines, as they do not belong to the University collection.

Lost Document Supply items will be charged the full replacement cost - this charge is set by the library which owns the book and will often be considerably higher than the retail price due to processing costs.

Annual fair usage limit
Due to the high cost of processing requests, there is an annual fair usage limit on the number of Document Supply requests that will be processed free of charge for each UCA student or staff member within a single academic year -

Should you wish to make requests beyond your fair usage limit, this is possible, but such requests will be chargeable at the subsidised rate of £8.00 per request.

Limitations
There are various reasons why a request may not be fulfilled -

• the item is already available in the University collection, either online or via the Click & Collect service
• the item is unavailable from any other UK library
• you have exceeded your annual fair usage allowance for requests and do not wish to pay for a further request
• you have an account block due to outstanding loans which have not been returned.

Supply of resources to other libraries
With some exceptions, including short loan, rare and specialised resources, the University lends print material from its collection to other libraries to satisfy external Inter-Library Loan requests, including, where permitted by relevant licence agreement, provide copies of material from electronic resources.

This service is administered through the national Inter-Library Lending Network and charged at British Library rates. There is no charge for renewals, but the University reserves the right to refuse renewal requests if the resource is required by an internal user

Income earned from this service is used to subsidise the cost of processing requests for university users.

Review
The Library will review this Policy every year and any significant changes will be considered and approved by the Director of Student Services.

January 2024
Review: January 2025