Syracuse University Libraries will discontinue its electronic course reserve service, or e-reserves, effective the end of spring semester.

E-reserves is a library service through which faculty members request print versions of articles or book chapters to be electronically posted on Blackboard, said Melinda Dermody, head of access and resource sharing for SU Libraries. Although the e-reserves service also applies to audio materials, it will only be discontinued for print resources.

Students and faculty will still be able to share and view documents through Blackboard, Dermody said. The discontinuation will only affect the way these documents are posted.

“The students will still have everything they need,” she said.

The number of e-reserves requests has decreased by more than half during the past four years, which Dermody said is the reason for the discontinuation. The number of faculty members using the service has decreased by 35 percent, according to a March 20 SU News release. This leaves only a small percentage of faculty using the service, Dermody said.

After speaking with subject librarians, who work with faculty to locate and post resources through e-reserves, library officials found that faculty members were more often finding and posting content without the help of library services, Dermody said.

“The drastic reduction is finally showing us that faculty just need, and can have, the power to put up what they need,” she said.

She attributed the decreased use of e-reserves, in part, to the increasing availability of electronic resources.

“We don’t need to be in the middle,” Dermody said. “With the availability of resources, faculty can have more flexibility to make content available to their students. Library e-reserves was one way, but not the only way.”

There are no librarians who work exclusively with e-reserves, she said, and librarians who work with e-reserves throughout the semester will focus their time on more popular services, such as interlibrary loan, starting second semester.

Librarians will continue to help faculty find appropriate resources, she said. Library staff members have developed step-by-step instructions on posting electronic resources to Blackboard.

“This change has been received fine,” Dermody said. “The fact is that most faculty have left e-reserves behind.”

Published on April 9, 2013 at 12:52 am