Reserve Procedures

When faculty members have material that they want to be readily accessible for the students in their class, that material can be put on reserve in the library. 

Students can then go straight to the Circulation Desk to request the material with the stipulation that:

  1. The student has a valid, current ID Card;
  2. The material does not leave the library, and;
  3. Each student can use the material for no more than two hours at a time.

Faculty must fill out a Reserve Request Form indicating the Instructor’s name, the academic department and class number, the title of the class, and the semester in which the material will be needed.  There is also room to show what type of material is being reserved (books or articles), whether the material belongs to the instructor or is from the library collection, the number of copies, and the item barcode(s).  

After the faculty member has filled out the form and given the material to a librarian or a staff member, it has to be processed through the computer as a reserved item. For books from our collection, this simply is a matter of changing the status from “circulating item” to “reserved item”.  For material belonging to the instructor, it means creating records for the item. 

The Reserve Request Forms are kept in a binder and filed alphabetically by instructor’s last name; reserved articles are kept in file drawers filed first alphabetically by instructor’s name, then alphabetically by title; reserve books are kept on shelves behind the Circulation Desk in alphabetical order by title. 

It is therefore of the utmost importance that the students know: a) whether the reserve material they need is in the form of a book or an article, b) the exact title of the book and the article in which it appears as well as the instructor’s name and the name of the class. Ideally, faculty members who have indicated in their syllabus that material has been put on reserve should be sure to have the material brought to the library before the semester begins.  Students get very upset when the designated reserve materials are not available and you can help solve this problem by putting the material on Reserve before you assign it.

Because of space limitations, we must at times limit the amount of material any one teacher can place on reserve during a given semester. At the end of each semester, all reserve materials will be removed from Reserve Status.  Library books will be returned to our circulating collection and teacher’s copies are returned to them or to their division

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