Information for Faculty

Bucknell maintains both traditional course reserves and electronic course reserves for faculty to use in order to make course materials available for their students. Traditional reserves includes such items as library-owned and personally-owned copies of books and movies and they are housed at the reserve desk on the first floor of the library. Electronic reserves includes on-line repositories of articles, links, and/or solutions that students can access over the web. All items that can be placed on the web in electronic format will go on electronic reserves.

Contact info: Traditional reserves - Mary Jean Woland (577-3287) Electronic reserves - Mary Beth James (7-1038) or Deb Balducci (7-3709)

Traditional course reserves
Electronic course reserves
Guidelines for submitting copies for scanning to reserves
Forms for placing materials on reserve - a link to the ISR E-Forms page

How to use your ERes account
An account for each faculty member is created by default when an ERes course page is created. Faculty can manage their pages or even create new ones if they would like. ERes is designed to be easy to use yet powerful, and many faculty have taken advantage of the system to add their own links, announcements, folders, etc., as well as manage their chat rooms and discussion boards. For instructions on using your account within ERes to manage your pages, see the helpful web pages or contact the ERes manager.

Traditional course reserves

Bertrand Library can place personal copies of books, old exams, journal articles, films and other items on reserve for your class. Please note that 3-5 working days are required for most items. More time is necessary at the beginning of each semester because we usually have a large number of submissions at that point in the semester. The library recommends a 25-item-per-course limit on reserve material. Our use statistics have clearly shown that items in excess of this limit are rarely used. Professors should provide a maximum of 5 copies of any one item and use a ratio of one copy per 12 students in a course. Course packs, test prep guides, or anthologies cannot be placed on reserve.

The library will follow copyright law in placing copyrighted material on reserve, and has established a copyright policy to handle these items. Some items can be put on electronic reserve.

In order for the library to accurately place material on reserve, submissions must be accompanied by the proper form, which can be obtained at the reserve desk or online in Adobe pdf format.

Personally-owned copies of reserve items will be returned to the faculty at the close of the semester, and a use report of all reserve items will be included.

Electronic course reserves

In 1996, Bucknell began a pilot program in electronic reserves. This pilot, which started with about 15 courses, now includes over 400 courses and has become our standard method of presenting course material to students whenever possible.

We use ERes by Docutek to place articles, chapters, solutions, links, problem sets, old exams, etc., in course pages on the web. The system is easy to use for students and it allows them to view and print material for class from anywhere and at anytime.

Faculty can submit items to the electronic reserves in a variety of ways. Items in electronic format, such as exams created in MSWord, can simply be emailed as an attachment or sent on disk to the ERes manager at eres@bucknell.edu. Items in paper format, such as handwritten problem solutions or journal articles, should be brought to the reserve desk where an appropriate form can be completed. Weblinks or class announcements can also be emailed to the ERes manager. The ERes staff will handle all aspects of scanning, converting, or formatting materials and make them available over the web, where they can be accessed by a specific course page URL or by links to ERes from the ISR pages, or by going directly to ERes at http://eres.bucknell.edu.

Guidelines for submitting copies for scanning on electronic reserves

In order to make our process as efficient as possible and to provide the best quality material for the students, we ask that faculty follow these guidelines:

Provide a clean, sharp copy of the material. Do not reduce the photocopy in order to get 2 pages on one sheet, staple the pages together, or provide copies that have been underlined or highlighted. Do not submit copies in sizes other than 8 1/2 x 11 (for example, please do not magnify pages so they will copy on legal size or 11 x 17 paper - these sizes will not fit in our scanner). Use Administrative Services or your departmental copiers whenever possible, as the copiers in the library provide perhaps the worst copies on campus. If you need to check out journals for a short period of time in order to make quality copies for e-reserves, that is fine - just consult a staff member for the procedure. Articles are always returned after scanning. Please note: the quality of the original is of utmost importance. Please consult with the ERes manager before submitting large quantities of materials for reserves.
For articles or chapters, complete the photocopy reserve form with citation information, including author, title, and source. These forms are at the reserve desk in the library. Submit this form with the copy of the material.
The only time that a copy is not necessary is when you have found full-text articles on a database to which we subscribe. In such a case, simply complete the photocopy reserve form and note the database where you found the article on the form.
For handwritten solutions, understand that lightly written (such as with a pencil) or second generation copies do not scan well. Provide a copy or the original with dark writing and good contrast. (Originals are always returned.)
Note that we do not have the resources to copy all materials and then scan them, process them, etc. In order for us to do our work well, we ask that you provide a good copy of the material.

Some materials cannot be put on electronic reserve and in those cases, we will make them available in our traditional format at the reserve desk. These items include materials that are not legible in electronic formats, items that would consume too much file space, or items that have copyright considerations. We place a reference to hard copy reserves on the ERes pages in this situation.

The library will make items available electronically if they are suitable for this format and will not normally duplicate electronic reserves with paper copies in the reserve room.