Course reserves are a great way to have your course materials available to students in the library! If an item is on course reserve, students are able to borrow the item for a 4-hour loan period. If you have materials that you wish to be on course reserve, you can make your requests directly to Meghan Hill at mmh5481@psu.edu.
Please Note: While the University's 96 hour quarantine policy is in place, course reserves are able to be checked out for a 24-hour period.
Please keep in mind:
Reserves are placed only during semesters when the course for which those materials were requested is in session.
Only non-copyrighted materials such as exams and syllabi are allowed to remain on "permanent" reserve.
No items are being automatically added until further notice. If you wish to have an item on Reserve, please contact the library to make a request.
You can only post 20% of the total pages of a book (20 pages for every 100). The only exception is for eBooks that the Libraries currently licenses.
E-Reserves only posts required readings. No optional readings! The reason for this is budgetary. Whatever is posted must be paid for in permission fees, per page per student. Regardless of how few students use a reading, we have to pay for every student in the class.
E-Reserves does not make links to freely available web content. Place those links directly in Canvas. With this in mind, if you are using materials in Libraries databases, you can link directly to those materials from Canvas.
Have PDFs of the readings you want online that are not already available in a Libraries database. If you don't have PDFs and cannot scan the material you need, you can request the desired PDFs from the Document Delivery Service run by InterLibrary Loan. You can request scans of materials both in-house and from other universities.
Do not put anything in the comments field! That will take the request out of auto processing and delay the PDF.
For faster processing, put the ISBN in the ISBN field.
Fill out the E-Reserve Request form. You can request more than one reading by clicking the blue 'Add Item' arrow. Access the E-Reserve Request Form.
After submitting the form, email the readings to Nicolle Nicastro, E-Reserves Coordinator at University Park, at nlb125@psu.edu. If the readings are too big to email, you can send multiple emails.
Addition E-Reserve information
Multiple streaming services are available to faculty and students! Among those services are Kanopy and Swank Motion Pictures, accessible by visiting the Libraries Databases A-Z page. Check out the Video Resources LibGuide for more information on using video in class.
The Library Licensed Videos chart assumes that the video is being used in credit courses, where all the enrolled students are PSU authorized users of library-licensed materials.
| Face to Face | Zoom/Streaming | Recorded Classes | Individual Viewing | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kanopy | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
| Alexander Street* | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
| Swank | Yes | No | No | Yes |
| Met Opera | No | No | No | Yes |
| Docuseek2 | Yes | Yes | No |
Yes |
*Includes: Academic Video Online (Avon), PBS Video Collection, Filmmakers Collection
More detailed information on using videos in courses, broken down by source.
The University Libraries provide thousands of streaming videos from several different distributors. This list of subject-specific databases is a subset of the complete list of University Libraries databases. Each video database can be explored by visiting the Subject Specific Databases page or the Multi-Subject Video Databases Page.
Not finding the video you need? Use the Streaming Video Request Form to place a purchase request. If the item is available through one of our streaming platforms, we would be happy to purchase it for your use. Further information about requesting streaming video through Swank.
For instructional use of short portions of a film that the Libraries hold on DVD, Music and Media Center can create clips so long as the use of the clips qualifies as fair use. To request video files for a course, instructors or instructional designers should send an email message to the Music & Media Center (musiccenter@psu.edu) with information about the video and course. The video files are accessed via the Libraries’ Course Reserves electronic reserves webpage and instructors can embed the links in Canvas.
Interlibrary Loan Services allows you to request materials that we do not have or that are unavailable in the University Libraries System!
| Service | Description |
|---|---|
| ILLiad | Request scans, articles, and physical materials from any academic library. |
| PALCI E-ZBorrow | Search Pennsylvania and regional academic libraries for book loans. |
| Uborrow | Search the libraries of our Big Ten partners for book loans. |
| WorldCat | Search holdings of libraries worldwide. |