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Electronic Course Reserves FAQs
What is
Electronic Course Reserves?
Electronic Course Reserves is a service available at
Baddour Library that allows faculty to post documents,
notes, audio clips, URLs, and still images to a
designated space in the library catalog. Students may
log in with their name and student ID number anytime,
from anywhere, to view these items.
What is the difference between Course Reserves and
Electronic Course Reserves?
Course Reserve is a service whereby physical items can
be loaned to students under restricted loan rules in
order to maximize availability. Items go out for two
hours, for in-library use only. Electronic Course
Reserves also loans items to students in a class, but
provides more flexibility. With Electronic Course
Reserves, multiple students can download the same file
at once, and are not limited by the physical constraints
of library-only use. Both regular and electronic course
reserves are retrieved from the same access point, the
library catalog, when a students looks up his
professor’s name or his course number to find out what
materials are available through the library for that
class.
How do students access materials via Electronic Course
Reserves?
To access Electronic Course Reserves, go to the
library
catalog at
http://frontier.dwc.edu/screens/opacmenu.html,
click on either “Course Reserves by Course Name,” or
“Course Reserves by Professor,” and enter the
appropriate information. A listing of items on reserve
for a given professor or course will come up. This will
include both books and videos that are on physical
reserve at the Circulation Desk, as well as scanned
articles that are available in electronic format. The
latter will carry the special notation, “Electronic Copy
Available;” see the screen shot below. When you click on the title of an electronic
course reserve, you will be prompted to enter your last
name and student ID number, and then you will be allowed
to view the item.
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What types of files and materials can I place on
Electronic Course Reserves?
• images — BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, TIFF files
• text (TXT) files
• Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) files
• Microsoft Word document (DOC) files
• MPEG Layer III compressed audio (MP3) file
• Journal articles or other printed pages in Portable
Document Format (PDF)
• PowerPoint Presentation (PPT) files
• Waveform Sound Format (WAV) files
• a URL (such as a web site or a persistent link to an
article in a database)
Can I place a book on Electronic Course Reserves?
That depends. If the item is an ebook from one of our
electronic collections (such as
Safari Tech Books
Online,
Xrefer Reference Collection, or the
ACLS History
E-Book Project), then we can link to it from your course
reserve page. And if a book is freely available online,
we can certainly point to it. However, we cannot take a
physical book and scan it in for Electronic Course
Reserves, as this would be a violation of Copyright Law.
How long does it take before items I give to the library
for Electronic Course Reserves become available to
students?
72 hours if you are asking the library to scan documents
into .pdf format for you; otherwise, 48 hours.
Why would I post materials for my course via Electronic
Course Reserves rather than just using Blackboard?
If you have physical items such as books on reserve at
the library, you might also want to post electronic
copies of documents in the same access point, the
library catalog, as a clearinghouse of supplemental
course information. Additionally, for some classes that
meet entirely face-to-face, you might not want to set up
an entire course in Blackboard just to house
supplemental readings for the course. But if your class
is heavily or entirely online, it might make more sense
to use Blackboard instead of Electronic Course Reserves.
For entirely online courses, electronic reserve is most
useful for items like handwritten test answers and
journal articles that are not available digitally in an
electronic database; see the graphic below.
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How do I place materials on Electronic Course Reserves?
Bring them to the library on paper, cd, or disk. Files
that are under 4MB (the college’s email attachment
limit) may be emailed to heron@dwc.edu after filling out
the Course Reserve Request Form at
http://www.dwc.edu/library/eres.shtml.
Are there any limitations to files placed on Electronic
Course Reserves, such as dpi settings or file sizes?
There are no set limitations; however, common sense
should prevail. As a general rule, smaller, more
compressed files will be easier for students to
download. When providing photocopies to be scanned in,
the original must be legible in order for the electronic
copy to be legible. It is the responsibility of the
faculty member to provide clean, readable copies.
Will you also keep hard copies on hand at the
Circulation Desk?
We will, if you like.
Can I email materials to be placed on Electronic Course
Reserves?
Yes, email them to heron@dwc.edu. The college has a 4MB
attachment limit, so larger files will have to be
delivered to the library the old-fashioned way. You will
also need to fill out the Course Reserve Request Form at
http://www.dwc.edu/library/eres.shtml before these can
be processed.
Whom do I contact with questions?
Linda Heron, Technical Systems Librarian, ext. 6543 or
heron@dwc.edu.
Updated
02/08/2007
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