E-Reserves Faculty Guidelines

Any faculty member or instructor who is affiliated with University of Cincinnati Libraries, Clermont College Library, or UC Blue Ash College Library may utilize electronic reserves in their Blackboard/Canvas online learning environment.

Contact your subject specialist librarian. 

When emailing your librarian, it is important to have complete information for each course, including:

• Instructor name, address, phone, email
• TA (if any) name, address, phone, email
• Course name and number including the section number
• The semester for which the material is intended

The reserve materials listed should indicate

• Full bibliographic information
• Chapter numbers or pages if appropriate
• Headers to be used for organizing the material online

As soon as you make your course available in Blackboard your students will have access to the E-Reserves; No additional password is needed! Every Blackboard course has an E-Reserves button by default which will now link to the Blackboard E-Reserves folder for your course. If you accidentally delete this button, contact Blackboard support to have the button restored (blackboard@uc.edu or 556-1602).

Any instructor materials such as lecture notes, quizzes, problem solutions, or old exams are appropriate for E-Reserves. Links to online materials with stable URL's are acceptable. Journal articles, book chapters, and other published material may be put on E-Reserves as long as Fair Use provisions are met. Review the Copyright Guidelines for further information.

• Xeroxed copies of chapters or articles should be submitted as single-sided copies. Copies should be clean and on 8.5x11" paper. Every effort should be made to submit paper copies of reserve materials along with the reserve submission form.
• Handwritten material should be written in black ink on white paper, single-sided, with at least 1/2-inch margins. Writing should be large and legible. First generation copies are preferred. Highlighting does not scan well.
• Typewritten or printed material should use at least 12 point font size for superscripts and subscripts.
• Electronic file formats include ascii (no hard returns), rtf, pdf, doc, ppt, jpg, ps, and eps (information on converting .tex or .dvi files to PostScript). Consult the library contact regarding other formats.
• Audio files are streamed in Windows Media format. Conversions can be made from CD's, LP's, or wav. files.

The Fair Use (link goes to a PDF created by Kenneth D Crews, Director of the Copyright Advisory Office of the Columbia University Libraries) provisions of the Copyright Law will be applied to copyrighted works. University of Cincinnati Libraries may decline materials not meeting Fair Use guidelines. This may apply for example to large portions of books or repeated use of the same material by the same instructor. Any questions concerning copyright permission for E-Reserves course materials should be directed to staff at your reserve library.

Copyright clearance will be sought, if necessary, from the Copyright Clearance Center.

* Please note that seeking copyright permissions can take a few days. Generally such permissions allow materials to be posted and available to students only during the semester for which they are required, and as such cannot be posted in advance or kept accessible after the semester ends. Any copyright fees are paid by the library and are set by the copyright holder. Occasionally the copyright holder may not give permission, or library administrators may determine the fees would be excessively high -- in these instances instructors will be notified and alternatives will be sought. Materials are processed on a first-come, first-served basis; when possible requests made in advance and accompanied with hardcopies of the materials are appreciated and help expedite posting once copyright considerations are met. Due to time and staffing considerations, submissions may be limited to 20 items per course.