See also answers to questions about:
Reserves are materials and resources that professors have identified to use for a class. They can be either print or electronic.
The MIT Libraries offer print and electronic reserve services.
To meet the requirements of the Higher Education Opportunity Act (HEOA) federal mandates on textbooks, course reserve and textbook information, you need to submit your requests prior to pre-registration:
Additional items can be put on reserve anytime after the pre-registration deadline, or during the semester.
Most requests are generally processed within 1-2 business days, but may take up to 5 business days. All reserves requested by the pre-registration deadline will normally be available before the beginning of the semester.
We encourage you to submit reserve requests as soon as possible to ensure that material is available to students when they need it.
However, there are a few exceptions:
Due to copyright restrictions we can only scan 10% or one chapter of a book (depending on the work), or 1 article from a journal issue. Materials that exceed these limitations can be placed on print reserve at the library.
The library cannot scan articles from a course reader for electronic reserves because copyright permissions have already been paid for the articles and scanning them will violate fair use. Instead, we suggest that you contact us at lib-res@mit.edu with a list of articles prior to ordering a course reader so that we can scan articles that comply with fair use guidelines.
If you've already ordered a course reader, you may provide a personal copy of the course reader to place on print reserve at the library. The library cannot purchase course readers as they are prohibitively expensive and used for only one semester.
Fair use restrictions prohibit the Libraries from placing "consumables" on reserve, e.g. workbooks.
Books from non-MIT libraries cannot be placed on print reserve. If you would like a book placed on reserve that the library does not own, you may drop off a personal copy of the book or we can order it. Book orders can take up to 6 weeks, so the earlier we get your request, the better.