Crerar Course Reserves

Introduction

Welcome to Crerar Course Reserve! If you are a faculty member or TA and wanting to place items on reserve for your course you may want to skip to the Reserve Processing section. If you want to use materials on reserve, read on...

The purpose of Reserve is to make materials in high demand readily available to all patrons. Therefore, each patron can only check out 2 reserve items at any given time, and these items are usually on 2-hour loan. A fine of $1/hour is assessed for late return of reserve material.

What's on Reserve?

Course Reserve: About half of of the material on reserve is for this quarter's physical and biological science classes. This includes textbooks, lecture notes, journal articles, exam solutions, and other things. Note that we only have what instructors give us: if an instructor doesn't give us their midterm answers, we won't have them on reserve. At the end of the quarter we return course reserve material to the instructor or to the general collection. More about finding items on course reserve.

Permanent Reserve: Some books, mainly frequently used textbooks and reference texts in physics, chemistry, biology, and medicine, are popular enough that they "live" at Reserve year-round. Almost all of these books are on 2-hour reserve, except for the physics candidacy exams, which are exclusively on electronic reserve, and the videos and DVDs, which are on 24 hour reserve.

Here is a list of all the subjects with material on permanent reserve.

How can I get materials from Reserve?

First log into Chalk using your CNet ID and password. From the list of your courses, choose the one you need material from and click on the link. In the menu on the left side of the page, choose "Library Course Reserves" and then follow the link on the subsequent page to see a list of the items on reserve for your course. For books, write down the call number and bring it to the circulation desk. Reserve material is kept behind the circulation counter and can be checked out any time the desk is open [hours].

You can check out a maximum of 2 reserve items at one time. Reserve items must be returned to Crerar Reserve - please don't take our books to Eckhart or the Reg! It usually takes a few days to get them back...

For electronic reserve, just click on the link in the catalog and it should take you to a PDF copy of the article/chapter/homework/etc. If the link is broken or you have trouble, contact us at e-reserves@lib.uchicago.edu for additional help. If you get a "404: Forbidden" error, check your Proxy settings to make sure that you're set up to access material from off-campus.

How long can I keep reserve items? What happens if they are late?

Most items on Reserve circulate for 2 hours. An instructor may request a longer loan period (24 or 48 hours), but we can only change this loan period with the consent of the instructor. Reserve items are not renewable. If we have another copy on the shelf you can recheck the item immediately, otherwise you will have to wait 30 minutes to allow other students the chance to check out the book.

If your due time would fall after the circulation desk closes, your loan period will roll over to the next day we are open. For example, on a typical weekday the circulation desk closes at 10:00 p.m., so if you check out a 2-hour item after 8:00 p.m. you will be able to keep it until the next morning (usually 9:30 a.m., one hour after we open). If your due date would fall on a holiday that the library is closed, it won't be due until we open again. Make sure to check the receipt that we give you in the book - that slip of paper is more than just an impromptu bookmark. We rely on you to know when your books are due, and by reading the receipt after we hand the book back to you, we can avoid confusion and frustration in the future.

The fine for overdue reserve items is $1.00 per hour per item, to a maximum of $75.00 per item. We may also release your name to your classmates and/or instructor. Normal lost book fees and restriction fees also apply (see the library's fine policies.)

If you need to return a book after the circulating desk is closed, please give the book to the person staffing the entrance exit desk. The book will be checked in first thing the next morning, but it's always a good idea to check back the next day to make sure we received the book. Do not leave the book on the counter or anywhere else unattended. At the moment, because of past abuses and concern about damage to the books, we do not have an overnight bookdrop.

Placing materials on Reserve

If you are teaching a course in the physical or biological sciences, please tell us as soon as possible so we can set up a course listing for you. Here's what we need:

The course department number (Chem 11100A), name (General Chemistry - A), and Instructor(s);
A list of textbooks for the course. Please be as complete as possible (author, edition, ISBN, and call number are most helpful). Please also indicate which items are required and will be heavily used - it helps us prioritize;
How many students you expect to be in the course and/or how many copies of each book you would like on reserve. Note that we may not be able to provide the requested number of textbooks, but we can work with you to get a sufficient amount on the shelf;
The loan period for each book - we will assign each book to 2-hour loan unless you say otherwise;
Your name and contact information, in case we have any questions about your request.

If you've taught the course before and would like to use the same textbooks as before, just let us know and we can reactivate them. Please make sure to inform us about any new editions of the books or other changes you would like to make.

You can email us this information (crerar-reserve@lib.uchicago.edu) or stop by the circulation desk and talk to us in person.

If we have your books in the library we will put them on reserve. If we don't currently own the books we will order them. We may contact you for more information if the book is unavailable.

Problem Sets and photocopies: We will scan lecture notes, problem sets, journal articles, and book chapters and place them on electronic reserve. If something is already available online as part of a library subscription or as free use, we will provide a link to that. Note that we have to comply with U.S. Copyright Law. Unless specifically requested, we do not keep the photocopies you give us after they have been scanned. We archive book chapters and journal articles for use in future courses, but we generally do not keep problem sets for more than a year after the course has been taught.

The virtue of good photocopies: Our ereserve files are only as good as the originals we get from you. Clear copies, with a minimum of black edges, are greatly appreciate. We also accept (and greatly prefer) electronic files - we can take almost any format from nearly any system. Just email it to us and we'll take care of it.

If you have any other questions about your course, please contact us at crerar-reserve@lib.uchicago.edu, or by phone at (773)834-2092. If you have a specific eReserve question, email e-reserve@lib.uchicago.edu.