Finding Permanent Reserve Items

Introduction: What's the Good of Permanent Reserve?

In addition to textbooks and readings for this quarter's science courses, Crerar Reserve also maintains a collection of standard science textbooks. These items are on permanent reserve: we don't send them back to the stacks at the end of the quarter. They include:

• most textbooks for introductory courses in astronomy, chemistry, physics, and biology that fulfill Common Core requirements;
• the latest edition of high-demand reference works, like the CRC Handbook;
• standard medical textbooks, like Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine or Gray's Anatomy;
• audiovisual materials, including both disk/CD-ROM textbook supplements and video collections (such as the Dr. Dave histology DVDs).

If these popular titles weren't kept on permanent reserve, they would be constantly circulating, meaning even though they're in high demand, only a few people would get to use them over the course of the year. By putting a book on permanent reserve, we ensure that everyone who needs access to the textbook can get it, even if the loan periods are kept relatively short. If you have any suggestions about material that should or should not be on permanent reserve, please contact us at crerar-reserve@lib.uchicago.edu. We'll take your comments into consideration.

How to find Permanent Reserve Material

Everything on reserve is shelved by call number. Thus, telling us you want "some book on chemistry" or even "Oxtoby and Nachtrieb" is not helpful, since we don't shelve books by subject or author. You must have the call number to get a book from reserve, and here's how to find it:

Method 1: The Regular Catalog

All permanent reserve books are also listed in the regular catalog, so you simply look the text up in the online catalog using the title, author, ISBN or other information you have about the book. The holdings data (at the bottom of the screen) will indicate if the book is on reserve:

Holdings   Location Call No. Status Copy No. Due Date Due Time Crerar Reserve, floor 1  RC46.H333 2001  Not charged  c.1

Write down the call number and bring it to the circulation desk. The staff there will get the book and check it out for you. (Note that you can't recall reserve books, despite the presence of that "recall" button - the loan period is usually so short that recalling a reserve book wouldn't make any difference.)

Method 2: The Subject List

If you want to see all the books on permanent reserve for a particular subject, just follow this link:

Core Science Texts on Permanent Reserve

What follows is a list of all the subjects that have material on permanent reserve. Just scroll through the list to find the category you're looking for, click the link, and you'll be presented with a list of all the textbooks on reserve for that subject. Get the bibliographic information, circulation status, and call number by clicking on the title of the book. Bring the call number to the circulation desk to check out the book.