Electronic Reserves

As a non-profit educational institution, many of our uses of copyrighted materials can be considered under Fair Use. The Reserves Office can place your supplemental readings, lecture notes, and other course materials available online 24/7.

Professor/Student Generated Work

Lecture notes, PowerPoint presentations, class handouts, study guides, sample tests, examples of student work, are examples of what can be placed on Reserve. Professor or student generated work must be submitted with a copyright permission form signed by all authors of the work, or a signed permission form must already be on file for those authors. Once a permission form has been received, it will be kept on file permanently.

Journal and Periodical Articles

One article per journal issue for electronic reserve is what can be placed on Reserve.. Before requesting a journal article to be scanned, search for the journal title in the library catalog. When journals are available online, we can link to an unlimited number of articles. Multiple articles from a single issue of a journal may be submitted but may not be scanned until the libraries have received copyright clearance for them. If the request is urgent, we can place the journal on Hard Copy Reserves while we await copyright permission.

Book Chapters

Book chapters are limited to ONE chapter from a book, or if excerpts of a book the our rule of thumb is to limit the excerpts to 10% of the book. If you need more than one chapter or 10% of a book, we will attempt to receive copyright permission before the chapters are made available. If the request is urgent we can place the entire book on Hard Copy Reserve. Before adding a book chapter to your page, do a search for the book title in NetLibrary to determine if we already have it in electronic format.

Anthologies

No part of any anthology may be placed on reserve. Copyright can be very complex when dealing with an anthology or collection of works. The Copyright Coordinator will help you find the original source, or you may contact the subject specialist appropriate to your subject area for specific help.

Electronic Materials (online articles, books, etc.)

Library-owned online periodicals, books and other content, are encouraged because they are easy to access and they do not require copyright clearance. Always search for a library-owned electronic copy of periodical articles before submitting a photocopied article. Do not link to websites to which you have a paid subscription if that website prohibits you from sharing the material. In these cases, while you may not be infringing on copyright, you may be violating a license agreement.