Instructions for faculty on how to place course reserve requests and additional considerations for various kinds of materials they may want to place on reserve.
Overview
LITS will retrieve items from the library stacks, purchase, and/or scan materials for faculty members to put on course reserve. This article explains how to place course reserve requests and additional considerations for various kinds of materials you may want to place on reserve.
How to place course reserve requests
Submit and track the status of requests for all types of reserves, including requests for purchase of reserve materials, through the online course reserve system.
You will be notified once your request is processed. You can also track the status of your submissions online. For support, please contact the Circulation Desk.
How far ahead of the semester do requests need to be submitted?
We ask that faculty submit reserve requests 4 weeks before the beginning of each semester. Submissions received after the beginning of the semester will be processed on a first-come, first-served basis, as quickly as possible. If you submit requests after the beginning of the semester, please allow at least 7 days before assigning the material.
What kinds of materials can be placed on reserve?
We will process requests for print reserves, ebooks and ereserves, and video. Faculty are welcome to submit personal items for course reserves at the Circulation Desk. This includes items that will have a portion scanned for ereserves and/or items that will be placed on physical reserves at the main library, the Language & Culture Commons or the Pratt Music Library.
In order to make library course reserve materials as widely accessible and barrier-free as possible for students, reserve materials will be licensed in digital format whenever feasible.
Find more information below on specifics regarding each type of reserve material.
Print reserves
Readings that are identified in my.mtholyoke as required, recommended and optional are all automatically placed on reserve. If you entered your readings there, you do not need to request them separately for library reserve. The Registrar’s Office provides detailed directions for submitting your readings.
Additional supplementary materials must be separately requested.
We will request a copy from another library in the Five Colleges if we do not own a book needed for reserve and cannot buy it. Please do not borrow the item from a Five College library directly.
Due to copyright restrictions, we cannot put coursepacks on reserve.
Ebooks and ereserves
LITS will scan course materials to be included in Moodle. Ereserves are only available to registered students in the course through the course’s password-protected Moodle site.
Please first check to see whether the materials are already accessible electronically. Use Discover or see our list of Databases A-Z. If you find the article electronically, you can link to it directly or download the PDF for Moodle.
Use of materials must comply with U.S. copyright law. Please see our research guide on copyright for help understanding fair use and determining when you need permissions. LITS’ practice is to readily scan:
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a single chapter of a book
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a single article from a journal or newspaper
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non-copyrighted material, such as exams, lecture notes, syllabi or U.S. government publications
LITS will not accept bound coursepacks or entire books for ereserves.
If you need an amount of content scanned that exceeds our comfort under the "fair use" and other provisions of copyright law, you may:
To achieve universally accessible scans, we prefer to scan from the original. Please bring us the book or other material directly or ask us to obtain the originals for you. If the original is not available, provide a clean, clear photocopy on 8½ x 11 paper, with adequate margins.
Material will be scanned into PDF format. Please note that LITS staff does not edit scanned material.
Once your request is processed and you receive a notification to download your PDF, you can then put that PDF into your Moodle course.
If you need assistance with Moodle, please email edtech@mtholyoke.edu.