[WEB4LIB]

[Jim Douglas]

Hello:
My name is Jim Douglas and I am Electronic Resources Librarian at Conant
Library, Nichols College, Dudley, Massachusetts. I also am looking into
e-reserves and hope to implement a system here during the summer. While a
number of institutions already have instituted a system and many more are now
working on one, it seems no one has shared the nuts-and-bolts of how to set one
up.(Anybody listening?)  From what I have seen, e-reserves essentially includes
either copying documents and making them available as Web pages or scanning
them and converting them to PDF files or something similar, mounting them on a
server with access links (generally from some Web page), and password
protecting some or all documents depending on copyright concerns.  How you go
about it will depend, of course, on a number of factors, including:

hardware/software options
copyright issues (what documents will be made avaialble?  What
procedures/policies will
       be put into place to make sure of compliance with copyright law?)
amount of material to be placed on e-reserve (Ths in turn will impact the
choice of
       software/hardware)
manpower (scanning, for example)
technological knowhow (for example, if you want to go all in-house, does
someone in the
    organization know how to password- protect documents, will you need CGI
    scripts/JAVA applications, etc.)

There are a few turn-key solutions available and I suspect we will see more in
the near future.  Because we are such a small institution (but one that,
fortunately, already has the hardware/software needed for our purposes), we are
going to go with an in-house solution (myself with a lot of help from my tech
colleagues; the IT department and the library recently merged; this will be a
good project to demonstrate the benefits of such a merger).

One of the best online resources I've found is

Electronic Reserves Clearinghouse: Links and Materials on the Web

at

http://www.cc.columbia.edu/~rosedale/#copyright

You might also take a look at two (now somewhat old but still excellent) papers
from I  library school students that are available online:

"Digital Reserves"  by Carolyn Sprague, Donna Movsovich, Sara Hively, Jonathan
Kelly, V.Delphine Khanna
at
http://web.syr.edu/~jfkell01/531report.html

and

"How I spent my summer vacation: Electronic Reserve Systems" by Elizabeth
Kraemer
at
http://www.uky.edu/~kraemer/Beth/ind_stud.htm

I would be most interested in the responses you receive and I suspect many
others on the list would appreciate a summary of responses as well.

Jim Douglas, Electronic Resources Librarian
Conant Library
Nichols College
Dudley, MA 01571
1-508-213-2333
E Mail: douglajs at nichols.edu


Rene Paquin wrote:

> Hello all
>
> Has anyone established an electronic course reserve system?
> I sure would like to know about it ie implementation, software, hardware,
> etc.  This is something the librarians are discussing and I am just
> starting to do some research on this topic.  Any help would be appreciated.
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> Rene Paquin
> Network Administrator
> Wilfrid Laurier University, Library
> Waterloo, Ontario
>
> (519)669-5509
> rpaquin at wlu.ca