Higher Education Resources ON demand — the HERON service

The demand for heavily used materials has led to Universities creating short loan collections and course readers — both have their problems, possibly soluble through digitisation. But the eLib On Demand/Electronic Reserve impact study made it clear that the economics of rights clearance and digitisation necessitated a cooperative approach. Addressing this the eLib project HERON, Higher Education Resources ON demand, is developing software and procedures to streamline rights clearance and digitisation and make it easier to check if texts have already been digitised. The operation of the software from pack building to copyright clearance, purchasing and fulfilment is described. HERON will be a self supporting commercial service by 2001.