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Faculty FAQ

Course Reserves

Course Reserves

The library provides electronic course reserves for materials in our collection, some personal copies, or in some cases items we can acquire. Reserves are supplemental materials and resources that professors have identified for use in a specific course. Course reserves are posted as links to your Canvas course. 

Reserve requests should be submitted at least 2 weeks (3 weeks for streaming media) prior to the date the material is needed for use to help ensure timely access. If the library does not have current access to a requested item and we need to order it, the reserve request may take additional time to fulfill. 

What can I put on Course Reserves

  • Book chapter(s) or small excerpt(s) from a book. The amount we can use per book is limited by fair use. 
  • Journal Articles
  • eBooks
  • A short story, essay, or short poem
  • A chart, graph, diagram, drawing, cartoon, or picture from a book, periodical or newspaper
  • Streaming Video (please review the streaming video guidelines below before placing requests for streaming videos)

Use the Course Reserve Form to request items.

What items cannot be placed on Course Reserve?

  • Videos from streaming services such as Hulu or Netflix. 
  • Titles from the Criterion collection that are not available to license from Kanopy
  • Titles from PBS that are not available to license from Kanopy or Swank
  • Digitization of DVDs with DRM

Streaming Video

Providing streaming videos for your class requires that streaming rights be licensed. Brookens Library supports the curricular need for streaming videos by providing multiple streaming video collections where rights have already been obtained. Locating and using a title that we have licensed through a streaming media database is the fastest and most cost effective way to use streaming media in your class.

  • Our primary streaming platform is Kanopy (see link below).
  • Additional streaming media databases can be found here.

Once you have identified the title(s) you’d like to use in your class, submit a course reserve form and we’ll provide a direct link to the video in your Canvas course.

While we subscribe to Kanopy (see link below) as a platform, we have not licensed all of their titles. If you identify a title you want to use for your class that we do not already have the streaming rights to, please submit a course reserve form. We will review your request and pending budget availability add it to our collection.

We have a contract with Swank (see link below) with which we can license individual titles. You can search their offerings by creating an account. If you identify a title you want to use for your class that we do not already have the streaming rights to, please submit a course reserve form. We will review your request and pending budget availability place an order for the title.

Streaming rights can be requested for titles outside of those collections, however there are limits to what the library can license. Streaming video licensing can be very challenging due to restrictive vendor licensing terms, high costs (typical streaming rights for one year ranges from $150-$600 per film), and the time it takes to obtain rights and/or digitize films. Please plan ahead, as it can take weeks to license these materials. We ask that you attempt to find an alternate title that meets your pedagogical needs in the library holdings for which we already have streaming rights prior to submitting a request.