A distributed electronic course reserves project: early findings

Electronic reserves is an added service that can benefit both the traditional and nontraditional student. In this article the authors describe an electronic reserves pilot project at Temple University using Innovative Interfaces, Inc.’s Course Reserves Module and Electronic Course Reserves product. Initial observations indicate that the project has had a different impact on the operations of Paley Library’s centralized access services unit and the departmental Biology Library participating in the project. The project has pointed out the need for investigating the economic and preservation issues of long‐term storage of reserves images and for developing quality standards for e‐reserve materials. This trial has directed our thinking about the future of integrating course reserves on our OPAC with Temple’s learning management software (primarily Blackboard) enabling the library to retain its function of organizing reserves and other documents.