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Guidelines for Producing Readings Masters

When copying from text books or journals it is important that they are of exceptional quality for reproduction. Quality and accessibility are directly related to the quality of masters you provide. Poor quality masters need to be scanned at a higher resolution which makes the final file size larger, they take longer for students to download, open and print.

To achieve high quality masters you should:

  1. Always photocopy from the original source not from an old copy you already have. Every time you copy from a copy you reduce the quality.
  2. Copy one page of the text to one A4 size sheet. If the text book is smaller than A4 you should enlarge the copy to fill the whole page, if the text book is larger you should reduce it to fit A4. Please check to ensure this zooming process does not cut off text or illustrations.
  3. Make sure that you hold the gutter of the book down firmly on the photocopier (without damaging it) to avoid black markings in the margins of your page.
  4. Remove any black marks from your original by cutting and pasting onto a new sheet of paper and copying again, manipulate the contrast if required to maintain quality. Use white-out to remove cut and paste lines. Tip: Magic tape is not usually visible when photocopied. You can also cover the exposed glass with white paper to reduce black margins.
  5. Avoid, if possible, readings that are image heavy or that have half-tone backgrounds. This requires a higher resolution scan to maintain the quality resulting in a larger file size which impacts on accessibility. If text on half tone backgrounds is difficult to read you may want to enlarge that section of the page to A4 size and manipulate the brightness/contrast on the photocopier so that it is easier to read. Note: if you have trouble reading the photocopy the quality will be worse once it is scanned.
  6. Assess whether you really need to supply the entire reading/chapter or whether a smaller portion of the reading would provide enough context and information to get the message across.
  7. When reproducing digitally always register your reading's table of contents with the DRS prior to developing your study materials to ensure that you are copyright compliant.

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