Back in November I asked the following question of lis-link:

From next academic year the nature of our collaborative partnerships is changing from a franchise relationship to a validation one.
Therefore students on these validated programmes will be returned via the partner College HESA and HESE returns, not ours.  However, the same students will be included in our registry database as we are responsible for sending out transcripts etc.
So my question is, given that this institution will be validating the award, are those students at partner Colleges on courses/programmes that we validate entitled to have access to our e-resources, Athens accounts etc?  Or will they now fall outside a reasonable definition of 'authorised users', and should now expect only to have access to those resources available via their 'home' institution?
I'd be grateful for any guidance or examples of good practice that you could offer.

Below I copy the 'anonymised' and slightly edited dozen or so responses I received (including a couple via lis-jibs-users) .  Apologies if I have unwittingly misrepresented anyone in my attempt at clarity.
Thanks again to all who responded so helpfully, and I now feel much more confident in bringing the issue to the attention of senior managers.

Peter Brooks
Head of Library Services

From a college library in a partnership role:

1.                   We work with 6 different HEAs with both franchised and validated courses.  The majority seem to go with limited access to resources for validated learners, and no electronic resource access.


From other HE Libraries:
1.            We are already in this position as a number of our partner institutions made successful bids for Hefce core and margin numbers this year.  Students on programmes where the student numbers are returned to HESA by the partner institution, not the University, are not allowed access to University e-resources.  Given the short notice we are in the process of implementing an interim solution for this year but from 2013/14 these students will not have access to the University portal which is how students access our e-resources. The expectation is that the partner institution will grow their e-resources to support students on these programmes. We are supporting them in doing this.

Our Partnership Division has organised meetings with relevant University staff (and partner institutions) to discuss the transition stage this year and the steady state from 2013/14. These have been useful in identifying issues and solutions. One result is a checklist of services with ticks and crosses for what the University will/won't provide for these programmes.

2.            This is something I have been trying to get my head around for a long time now - the bottom line has always seemed to be if we do not return the student numbers then we cannot give access to our e-resources (as they are not legitimately our students). I can't tell you the number of committees I have sat in & been made to feel the library is being awkward & I know from experience this is the case for many other librarians. Unfortunately some senior managers do not appreciate the predicament we are in.

The nature of some collaborative partnerships also seems to be getting more complex, previously all franchised programmes were our students however we seem to be seeing a shift here as well.   Another problem we have is allowing staff who are supporting students at partner institutions access to the e-resources - even though the students are registered with us some licences do not permit the staff to have access - not a very helpful situation but it looks like the JISC decision tool will address this.

3.            Your query has been passed to me by my Director.  My role is to manage all requests for access by non-core groups so I face these sorts of questions frequently from various groups and University staff negotiating partnerships. Please note that I am not a licensing and content expert.

My view is that validated students are not entitled to access as they are not your students and I think this would be supported by the JISC decision tool.  Being on the registry could be interpreted as being RAC students but that is not what licensors intend or the licence covers.  We have investigated providing a service to validated institutions but were unable to establish a business case based on recharging institutions for the service.

However we do offer our validated institutions library type resources that are freely available. It is an on-going task to keep senior managers informed about the legal licences that underpin our online services without appearing to 'block' partnership initiatives so I would advise you to raise the risks with senior staff and provide some options for them to consider.

4.            I am currently supporting students that study at the University of ******'s partner colleges from a library perspective - both on franchised and licensed / validated course arrangements.  We very clearly separate between the two cohorts: franchised students, even though studying at a college, are our students and therefore entitled to everything a campus-based student is including full library membership.  Licensed / validated students belong to the college, the university only provides accreditation, i.e. stamp of approval to put it in very simple terms, obviously a lot more goes on in the background, so they are not our students and don't have the same rights.
So what this means with regards to library provision is that students on a licensed / validated model are treated as external visitors which entitles them (like any other visitor) to reference access to the Library on weekends and during vacation with no rights to borrow any of our books and only walk-in access to electronic resources where the licences permit this.  Students or their college might choose to pay for external library membership if they feel this is valuable (very few do!) and this would entitle them to 24 hour access to the library and borrowing of 5 books at a time.  As mentioned we do offer walk-in access to some of our e-resources depending on licence terms, but we do offer this to all our visitors who have to be in the library building using particular PCs to access these resources as read-only access, this is not particular to licensed students.
The general advice we have always given to students at partner colleges (franchised and licensed) is that their college library is the main resource provider - this is even more important for the licensed students of course.  I assume whenever your institution decided to start working with colleges there will have been visits to evaluate the suitability of the college which would have included an inspection of the library and learning resources to make sure that the colleges were able to support the students so the licensed students shouldn't have to rely on your resources.

5.            We too have students in a similar position at several partner FE colleges.  We no longer provide e-resource access to those students through our own authentication (as we do to students who are still on fully-franchised courses). Instead the validated-award students get:
*             Increased access to databases provided by the college as a prerequesite to approval of the validation/partnership agreement. (i.e. the colleges had to spend more money on e-resources in order to be allowed to continue to offer our degrees.)
*             Walk-in access to e-resources in the University Library, where licences permit.

6.            At University of *****, we run both Franchised and Validated courses.  Franchised users are our own students and get full access, whereas Validated users are treated as non-members, but may buy external membership.  That does not include e-resource access, but is one of the reasons we have tried to provide walk-in access to e-resources where allowed, as external members are able to access the library at any time.

7.            We are dealing with the situation in the following way:
*             students on validated courses do not have remote access to our electronic resources according to our interpretation of the licences and definition of validated students.  Like you they will be still registered with the university (but only) from a QA perspective.
*             Over the year we hope to work with partners to help them identify the resources that are being recommended on reading lists so that they are available at the institution where the student is taught.

8.            At ***** University we do not count students at partner institutions who are on programmes that are only validated as "authorised users". This decision was taken on advice from the University's Quality Support Office which monitors all Programme Specifications. If this category of student requires access to the licenced e-resources we can offer them "walk-in" access in the Library, where possible and applicable.

9.            We have a situation like this where the students are in the partner's HESA return. I am quite clear that this means the partner is a separate entity and needs to licence its own resources for the students. I am also now quite clear (after having to withdraw access to e-resources for certain groups) that where we provide validation only or franchise our programme we do not provide resources. Simply putting the students on the student record system does not make them your students. The key factors I use to determine if they are our students or not are:

*             Do they pay fees to us?
*             Are they taught by our staff?
*             Are they in our HESA returns?
It has taken a lot of effort to get the institution to realise the problem, but I think we are there now.

From Licensing bodies:
1.            This can be a complex question and depends on a number of factors. You may find our "decision tool" of help:
https://www.jisc-collections.ac.uk/News/Decision-Tool---Users-at-Partner-Organisations/

2.            I think that you will find that these students will be excluded from most of your licences; they certainly would not be covered by the 'Standard Chest Licence'.
You might find our 'Student Access Decision Maker' device helpful when reviewing each of your licences
http://www.eduserv.org.uk/lns/agreements/about-our-licences/online-resource-licences/decision-maker