Fresno State Library
E-Reserves
The Library supports campus faculty through its Reserves Services, including E-Reserves.
The E-Reserves service aims to provide students with electronic copies of course materials to maximize the use of library-owned or subscribed resources, reduce the cost of course materials, and enhance student success by providing 24/7 access from any location through an authentication process. While not every course material is within scope for E-Reserves, the service does allow faculty to share materials with students within the limits of copyright and fair use.
Electronic reserves include:
- Small portions of books
- From the library’s collection
- From items personally owned by the instructor
- Copies of materials created by the instructor (homework assignments, quizzes, exams, syllabi, etc.)
- Permalinks to articles, ebooks, ebook chapters, etc.
- Government publications
- Links to open educational resources
- Audio/video clips and other items that conform to copyright laws
E-Reserves Process
Material can be placed on E-Reserves by faculty by using the E-Reserves submission form. Faculty can submit individual references for items owned by the library or provide a copy of the course syllabus, and library staff will search for available materials. Please allow adequate time for library staff to prepare your E-Reserves.
The library can only share material that has been lawfully obtained through faculty members' licenses or the library collection. The library cannot currently support the purchase of materials exclusively for use on E-Reserves, and our collection development policy prohibits the purchase of most textbooks. The library will also be unable to support copyright clearance fees at this time. Please refer to the copyright section below for more information.
Access to Materials
Access is restricted to students registered for a particular class and is not made available on the web for public view. Students can access E-Reserves through your canvas shell. They will also be accessible from the library E-Reserves page. If you would like students to be able to access materials physically, items may be placed on physical reserve using our Reserves Services. An instructor-provided password is required. The library CANNOT provide students with course passwords.
Limitations, Copyright & Fair Use
Where materials do not fall within fair use, the items may still be a candidate for eReserve provided permission is sought and granted by the copyright holder. It is the instructor's responsibility to obtain such permission or determine in good faith after reasonable inquiry that fair use tenets cover the intended educational use of copyrighted material. The library cannot share complete works, materials not owned by the faculty member or library, or materials on loan from other libraries. The library reserves the right not to accept items if it judges that the material's scope, nature, or extent is beyond the reasonable limits of fair use.
Use this fair use checklist as a guide before submitting requests from E-Reserves.
Other helpful copyright tools:
- View the Library copyright policy.
- The Copyright Clearance Center has published a guide titled Using Electronic Reserves: Guidelines and Best Practices for Copyright Compliance which offers best practices and guidelines for using E-Reserves and methods to secure copyright permissions for E-Reserves.
- Visit the Copyright.Gov website for general information.
- Work with your library liaison, or Subject Librarians, to discuss fair use determinations.
Video Tutorials
Instructor Guide #1
Learn how an instructor can add electronic materials to their courses.
Instructor Guide #2
This video covers how an instructor can access and share the eReserve materials.
Student Guide
This video instructs students on how to access their instructor’s eReserve materials.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
The library is unable to purchase course materials for placement on E-Reserves. If the instructor of the course has a copy of the material that can be used.
While this is a commonly used figure, copyright actually does not consider a specific number of chapters or percentage of a book in determining fair use. Instead, they use the four factors to determine if a given use meets fair use. We suggest faculty make the decision based on the four factors and not rely on any specific guidelines like percentage or chapter.
Sharing the entire textbook for your course would not fall under fair use, so we cannot offer the entire book on E-Reserves if we do not have an unlimited-user license to that title. We do have Controlled Digital Lending (CDL) capabilities, which restrict individual uses of digitized materials through DRM. Please contact ereserves@mail.fresnostate.edu for more information if you think this may be a solution for your course.
While we hope E-Reserves is helpful for you and the students in your course, it is not always a fit. The service intends to provide students with quick and easy access to course materials, and save faculty time in embedding materials directly to the course shell. If your course relies heavily on IA or custom online textbook components, licensing restrictions prevent us from being able to facilitate access. Consider this limitation when making course text adoptions.
While this varies based on format and time of year, here are some general guidelines:
- Electronically licensed materials: 24-48 business hours.
- Physical materials that need to be digitized: 72-96 business hours.
- Instructor copies: 72-96 business hours after the library receives a copy of the material.
- Due to high volumes of requests at the beginning of the semester we suggest requests be placed 4 weeks in advance of the spring and fall semesters to facilitate all items being in place prior to classes resuming.
E-Reserves staff will remove items from E-Reserves at the end of the semester. If faculty wish to reuse the course materials they should submit a new request.
Just submit this form and the library will get working on your request. Look out for an email from the library on the status of your request. If anything cannot be made available, we will also let you know at this time.
More Questions?
Contact ereserves@mail.fresnostate.edu with any additional questions about E-Reserves. We can also troubleshoot, help you make decisions about materials not listed on this page, or materials that may fall outside the scope of this service.