Course Reserves: Guidelines and Copyright
Guidelines for Placing Materials on Course Reserves
- Access to reserves materials is restricted to the instructor and students enrolled in any given course. All users must log in via MyMC > Blackboard > Blackboard Course > Library Course Reserves to view reserves materials for a specific course.
- Reference and other restricted materials (including bound and entire issues of unbound periodicals) are not eligible for course reserves since they are always available for use in the library.
- The request to place materials on reserve will be initiated by the instructor, who is expected to apply the principles of Fair Use. All uses will be non-commercial and for educational purposes only.
- Items to be placed on reserve should be obtained by the library from their collections or owned by the requesting instructor; items from interlibrary loan (ILL) cannot be placed on reserve.
- Course reserves materials will be removed after the course ends. If materials are used in following terms for new courses, faculty must either place a new request for that material or clone the material from a previous course. If an instructor wishes to use the same materials again for the same course in a subsequent semester, copyright clearance or the permission of the copyright holder must be obtained for each instance of use.
- Scanned documents will be in PDF format. Faculty and students can download a free copy of Adobe Acrobat Reader if they don't already have that application.
Personal Copies
Faculty have the option of placing their own personal copies of books, articles, and/or course packets on reserve.
- To ensure that these items are returned to you, please identify and label all personal items you want placed on reserve, e.g., Last name of instructor, Course, Title of item, # (Jones, Spanish 101, Arriba!, #1)
- Personal copies may be marked with a Montgomery College stamp and a security tag. If you do not wish your items to be marked, please let us know.
- Personal copies will be available for faculty to pick up at the end of each semester. You must pick up your personal copies or contact reserves employees to make other arrangements no later than six weeks after the semester has ended. Otherwise, books and photocopies will be donated to the library.
- Although library employees take every precaution to ensure the good condition of personal copies, there is risk involved with these materials being used by students.
Loan Period
The loan period for physical materials is two hours. Please advise your students that they must present a current MC ID card to use reserve materials that are located in the library and that materials are restricted to in-library use. Items placed on electronic reserves do not have a set loan period, but students may have to log in using their M number to access them if they are off campus.
Books/E-Books/Chapters
Faculty can make full-text books available to their students for a limited loan period through reserves. Reserves employees will pull books from the library stacks, recall books that are currently checked out, or use faculty-supplied copies as appropriate. When requesting a book chapter or excerpt, please note that due to copyright restrictions, reserves employees can only scan up to 10% of a book for e-reserves.
Periodicals
For articles, provide as much information as possible. Reserves employees will locate the article and make it available either as a web link or as a PDF file. Please note, entire issues of MC Library's print periodicals will not be placed on reserve.
Copyright
The MC Library adheres to and is in compliance with the copyright principles and protections as outlined in Title 17 of the Copyright Act of 1976new window, which includes the rights and principles of exemptions as outlined in Section 107 (Fair Use)new window. The library will follow the principles of Fair Use as outlined in Section 107 for placing materials on reserve. Please see the library's guide to copyright and fair usenew window for more information.
The amount of the work to be placed on reserve will be taken into consideration when deciding whether an item falls within Fair Use guidelines.
- Article: if the article is not available through one of the MC Library's licensed online resources, no more than one article from a single issue of a periodical or journal can be posted
- Book Chapters: no more than one chapter from a single work with ten or more chapters OR 10% from a work with ten chapters or fewer. If short excerpts are taken from several chapters, the amount should be equivalent to the average chapter length of a book with ten or more chapters or 10% from a work with ten chapters or fewer.
- Books: the library will not scan an entire book or other work. However, the library can post links to full-text works that are available through licensed electronic resources or on the Internet.
- Fair Use Exemptions: Items in the public domain, those published before 1924, produced by the U.S. federal government, or licensed under an appropriate Creative Commons agreement can be placed on reserve without consideration of Fair Use.