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Guidelines for UB Instructors

Books and audiovisual materials which are required for courses may be placed on Course Reserve. Supplemental or recommended readings, including but not limited to homework solutions, lecture notes, and sample exams cannot be placed on Course Reserve.

All Course Reserve requests are processed in the order they received. Under exceptional circumstance, for expedited processing, please contact the appropriate Reserve Specialist.

Some materials requested for Course Reserve may not be immediately available in the library and will require longer processing time. They may have to be recalled from borrowers, obtained from other libraries, or ordered from publishers.

Submitting Course Reserve Lists

Please use our online form to submit your course reserve reading list. For quicker processing, please copy the URL for the item in our library’s catalog.

Please do not give students required reading assignments until you are certain your reserve list has been processed and the materials are available.

You can check the status of your request by go to search.lib.buffalo.edu:

  • Click Reserve
  • Type in your name
  • Filter by course number if you’re teaching multiple courses

When selecting the type of Reserve loan period for books and other formatted materials such as audiovisual materials, keep in mind your course deadlines, length of readings, and size of classes/sections. There are five types of Reserve.

Copyright Information

Anthologies of copyrighted material cannot be accepted for Reserve.

Exceptions to the Copyright Law will not be made. Please refer to the following sections of the Copyright Law (Title 17, United States Code) for more information:

To learn more about copyright, see the copyright research guide.

Order Requests

If you find that the University Libraries do not own the required course materials, please check "Material needs to be purchased" on the electronic form.

PLEASE NOTE: It can take from three weeks, or longer, to obtain and process ordered material. If the library is unable to purchase the item, you will be contacted directly.

Personal Copies

Faculty members may place personal copies of materials on Reserve. However, the Libraries cannot be responsible for loss of or damage to such materials. Personal material will be labeled and made security sensitive. Unless otherwise requested, these items will circulate under 24 hours Reserve.

All personal copies will be returned by campus mail after the end of the semester unless other arrangements have been made.

Reactivate Previous Requests

You may reactivate past semester’s reading lists. Reactivation requests should be submitted via email to libresrv@buffalo.edu. Please include the following information:

  • Course Title
  • Course Number (e.g. HIS 101)
  • Year and semester of current course
  • You may only reactivate the reading list of your most recently taught semester:
    • If your reading list has not changed, please indicate that we should reactivate the entire reading list
    • to reactivate only selected items or to omit selected items, please provide us with an updated reading list with full citations

Removal of Material from Reserve

All materials are automatically removed from Course Reserve at the end of each semester.