Electronic Reserves:  What They Are
Electronic reserves are Web-accessible versions of course materials traditionally placed on reserve in a library.  When reserve materials are digitized and put on a library web server, they are available at all hours to Claremont Colleges students using Web-capable computers in dorms, offices, libraries, and labs.  The material can be used by more than one student at any time, and it cannot be stolen, damaged or changed as printed materials can be.  This service is limited to the campus network and Claremont Colleges students who live off-campus can access electronic reserves through academic computing center accounts.

Materials Available Through Electronic Reserves
Journal articles, book chapters, homework keys, exams, class notes, slides, syllabi, lecture notes, and overheads are among the many typical course materials that can be put on electronic reserve.  Links to other Web sites also can be placed “on reserve.”  Due to copyright restrictions, the reserve desk you use for paper reserves is still the place to put on reserve entire books and journal issues currently under copyright protection; it is an infringement of copyright to electronically reproduce more than limited portions of items not yet in the public domain.  For more information on what constitutes “fair use” in an academic setting, please see Copyright Guidelines for Electronic Reserves, our policy statement regarding these issues.

Other Features
Other features include a bulletin board for each course, an optional live chat room for course discussion, the ability to organize documents in folders, and the choice of arranging documents alphabetically or chronologically.  Professors and TAs can have e-mail links on their pages.  A password feature ensures that access to reserve materials can be limited to course participants only.  And course pages must be passworded whenever they contain copyrighted materials; instructors may also request passwording for other reasons.

How Access Is Provided
Our electronic reserves system can handle documents of any format.  Since most of the material we make available electronically is scanned from photocopies (which instructors give to their local library circulation desks), these documents are loaded as PDF (portable document format) files.  PDF files allow multi-page articles to be accessed as one item.  Users will need the Adobe Acrobat 3.0 reader, freely available from the Adobe web site, in order to view and print PDF files.  (Go to http://www.adobe.com/ and click on the “Get Acrobat Reader” button.)  As mentioned earlier, documents can also be provided in MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint, HTML, etc.  JPEGs (to name just one image format) of scanned slides can be grouped to provide access to multiple images through a single link for a slide show format.

How Do I Participate?

• As early as possible, bring in your requests to the library circulation desk you normally use for your course reserves. Provide crisp, clear photocopies of journal articles and other material to be scanned.  With the initial photocopying already done, Library staff can quickly scan documents through a sheet feeder, thus reducing processing time for your reserves.
• Anything that you have available electronically (MS Word files and other document formats, slide presentations scanned as image files, etc.) should be delivered on a disk.  File names can be more than eight characters long and contain capitals, underscores, and dashes; they cannot contain spaces or symbols (“&”, “#”, “*”, etc.).
• If you give us files make sure they are on PC disks (sorry, we don't have any Macs in our circulation points) and note the names of the files, and the program and version that produced them (Word 6.0, PowerPoint, etc.)
• When multiple image files will need to be accessed through a single link/description (as in slide presentations), please name each file (in a set) identically, with the exception of the final two characters.  These should be numbered “01” through “99”; e.g. “name01.jpg” through “name99.jpg” (assuming a presentation of 2-99 images; presentations of 100+ images need to start with “001” and so on).  JPEGs are the preferred format for this but others can also be supported.

About ERes:
ERes is the name of the electronic reserve system developed by Docutek Information Systems, maker of web-based software systems for academic institutions.  They are on the World Wide Web at http://www.docutek.com/.