Miller Library offers a reserve system for faculty to provide material to their students for a limited time, including materials held by Miller Library and materials provided by faculty members. Reserves should be requested when an instructor anticipates a heavy demand on items, including books, videos, articles, and websites, as well as works authored by the professor like exams or class notes.

Items placed on reserve are either located behind the Circulation Desk or are made available online through the library’s eReserve service (students can access available Course Reserves here).

For Faculty

To allow sufficient time for processing, faculty should submit a reserve list to the library Circulation Manager as soon as possible and at least 14 days before the class is to set to begin. Reserve lists will be processed in the order that they are received and faculty will be notified by email after the reserves have been pulled and/or added to the reserve system.

After the semester is over, reserved materials will be removed from the reserve system (unless other arrangements are made). Personal items will be returned by campus mail. 

Placing Course Reserves

To place materials on reserve:

• complete the reserve request form
• provide the Circulation Librarian with a copy of the course syllabus 
• deliver to the library any personal items to be placed on reserve (items will be barcoded)
• email any files (e.g. Word or PowerPoint files) for e-reserves to library.circulation@cornerstone.edu
• provide copyright permissions/signed student releases wherever needed (see below)

Note that, although every effort will be made to insure that materials are treated carefully, the library cannot be held responsible for replacing lost or damaged personal materials.

Guidelines for Submitting Copies 

Note that when physical or digital copies of copyrighted material are added as course reserves:

• All eReserve content will have a password assigned by library personnel.
• If you wish to use copyrighted material for more than one semester, and the material is freely available on the open web, the library will provide that link to access it. If the material is not available on the open web, you must obtain copyright permission. You must submit a copy of such permission along with the reserve articles.
• If a professor wishes to place a photocopy on reserve at Miller Library, the professor must include the copyright notice of the photocopied material along with the copies.
• Multiple copies (a reasonable maximum is six copies) of "fair use" material may be placed on reserve.  "The number of copies should be reasonable in light of the number of students enrolled, the difficulty and timing of assignments, and the number of other courses which may assign the same materials, 17 U.S.C. 107 (1) & (3)" (Talab, 75).
• Either the library or the professor needs to own an original copy of the material that is photocopied and placed on reserve. If neither owns the original, copyright permission must be included with the article being submitted for reserves. (Information from the Internet can be freely submitted, though the library will use discretion in determining if copyright permissions are needed.)

Check-Out Policies

When placing an item on reserve, faculty will choose whether to assign it a 2 hour, 4 hour, 1 day, or 1 week check-out period. Any items with a 4 hour or less check-out period cannot leave the library. Reserve items cannot be renewed or have holds or recalls placed on them. A limit of five reserve items per person can be checked out at one time. Materials returned late incur a $1 charge for every time unit (hour or day) late they are returned (week reserves use the day unit when calculating the charge), up to a $5 fine.

Course Reserve Guidelines for Online Classes

Under the TEACH Act, material used by distance instructors for their regular class instruction may be made available on an ongoing basis through the library’s eReserve system without copyright permission, if:

• The use is either “live” or for asynchronous class sessions.
• The use does not include the transmission of textbook materials, materials “typically purchased or acquired by students,” or works developed specifically for online uses.
• Only “reasonable and limited portions,” such as might be performed or displayed during a typical live classroom session, are used.
• The use is NOT from a coursepack or interlibrary loan
• The use does NOT apply to digital content provided under license
• Scanned content is NOT available digitally, or is protected by technological measures (see Copyright Clearance Center’s “The TEACH Act,”).

Requesting Copyright Permissions

Often, you will be able to easily obtain copyright permission using the following steps:

1. Go to copyright.com/
2. Type the title of the material you want.
3. Select Pay-Per-Use Options
4. Select Price & Order, and fill out appropriate information.  If the Price & Order option is not available, select Contact Info, revise the sample letter below to fit your request, and mail it to the address listed.

Other Information on Copyright

• Campus Guide to Copyright Compliance
• Copyright Crash Course
• Center for Social Media
• Digital Image Rights Computator

Need Help With Course Reserves?

Email library.circulation@cornerstone.edu or call 616.222.1458.