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Course Reserves

Requesting Course Reserves

Instructors may request that items be placed on Course Reserve by submitting a Reserve Request form, available online or at the Circulation Desk.

Requests should be submitted at least seven working days before the material will be used for class.

Instructors may place items from the College Library's collection or their own personal items on reserve. However, materials owned by another library may not be placed on reserve. Instructors are encouraged to place no more than two copies of any article on print reserve.

All items are removed from reserve and all personal items returned at the end of every semester. If items need to be kept on Reserve for multiple semesters, please be sure to note this on the reserve request form.

Copyright guidelines stipulate that material used more than for more than a single semester requires permission from the copyright holder in order to comply with fair usage. Permission forms can be found here.

Electronic Reserves

E-Reserves are provided (under fair use provisions of the U.S. Copyright Act) to facilitate and enhance classroom learning and may be printed once for personal use only.

Electronic reserves will be listed in the library catalog along with print reserves under the instructor and course name. E-Reserves can be accessed from outside the library by entering an SJC username and password. Most E-Reserve materials can be read or printed using Adobe Acrobat Reader; however, please remember that some longer articles or larger files may be split into multiple parts. For a free version of the Adobe Acrobat Reader, please click here

All E-Reserve materials must contain a complete bibliographic citation on the first page. Materials may be submitted in either paper or digital form, either as a Word or a .PDF document. Please contact the Circulation department regarding the use of other formats. In addition following the guidelines will help ensure that E-Reserves are processed in a timely and efficient manner:

* Do not staple articles
* Avoid black borders (saves toner and file size for E-Reserves)
* Copy on one side only
* Allow at least 3/4 inch margins
* Use the same title on the reserve as you use in the class and syllabus

Due to Copyright restrictions, only one article from a book or journal issue may be on e-reserve at a time. Material that violates any of these guidelines will not knowingly be made available. Please note - in many instances it the SJC Library may also beable to link electronic material from Library databases to e-reserve lists.

The library will place on E-Reserve the following:

* A single chapter from a book
* A single article from an issue of a journal or periodical (one article per issue)
* One short story, short essay, or short poem from a collective work
* One chart, graph, diagram, drawing, cartoon, or picture from a book, periodical, or newspaper (one per book or journal issue)
* A short excerpt (not to exceed 10 percent of the total) of a work which is not divided into chapters or articles

Please note that responsibility for adherence to these copyright guidelines lies with the instructor.

Article Linking

Articles are often available electronically with access provided from one or more of the library’s subscription databases. Because article linking from a list of course reserves is often the easiest approach to providing material to students, when placing articles on reserve, please check first for database availability. If you are unsure about how to do this, please contact the Reference Department at 566-3256 or by email.