Service Highlights

Course Reserves

Traditional Course Reserves  

What are traditional course reserves?

How do students locate materials on Reserve?

Students may ask for materials at the Circulation desk.  They may request packets and copies of faculty owned books by the instructor’s last name and library owned books by call number.

How do instructors place books on Reserve?

To place books on Reserve, instructors simply bring them to the Circulation desk on the fifth floor of the Library Learning Center.  They will be asked to fill out a form identifying which course(s) and semester(s) they would like to associate the books with.

 How do instructors place packets on Reserve?

Instructors may also bring packets to the Circulation desk.  It is recommended that they supply one clean, clear, photocopy or print out of any item they would like to place on Reserve.  Packets of material may also be placed on Electronic Reserve.

Electronic Reserves, or ERes

What is ERes?

ERes stands for Electronic Reserves.  Electronic Reserves is a digital version of the paper course reserve reading many instructors may already be providing for their students through the Circulation Department of the library.  Documents such as handouts, tests, and articles will be made available to students through our ERes web site.   The Brooklyn Campus’ Electronic Reserves are located at http://breserves.liu.edu. 

 What are the advantages to using ERes over traditional paper reserves?

ERes allows students to have access to reserve materials 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.   Students can access materials from their home or office, which is especially convenient for those who commute or work full time.  Students can read documents online, save them to their home computer, or print them out for later reference.

ERes also allows instructors to have greater control over the materials they have on reserve.  Instructors can request that documents have limited visibility dates allowing them to post time-sensitive information.  ERes also offers a variety of options for organizing documents.  Documents can be archived in the system for use in future semesters, saving time and storage space.

How do students find a course page?

Students can search for courses by department, instructor’s name, or by doing a keyword search for any term(s) from the name of the course, instructor, department, document, or author.

What kind of documents can instructors post on ERes?

ERes supports a wide variety of document formats.  Instructors can post documents they have generated themselves in programs like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. They can also submit print copies of documents to Circulation. These documents will be scanned and converted into PDF files.   ERes course pages can also contain images, links to outside web sites, and links to LIUCAT, the library’s online catalog.  If an instructor has documents in a file format not listed the Circulation Department will make every effort to accommodate posting it.

Can copyright-protected materials be posted on ERes?

Yes, but permission must be granted by the rights holder (usually the publisher) in most situations.   In some circumstances the rights holder may charge a fee. For more information on copyright, see the Copyright and Course Reserves (pdf format) guide in the ERes forms section.

What if students don’t have computers at home?

ERes can be accessed from any computer with a web browser and internet access.  Students may access ERes from the library or any computer lab on campus if they cannot at home.  The Circulation Desk will also continue to maintain one copy of every item on paper Reserves for students without access to a computer.

ERes forms, guides, and copyright information