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Electronic Reserve FAQ

Connect to the E-Reserve System | Ask Us! (e-mail helpline)


What's available on electronic reserve?

Electronic reserve provides web access to course-related readings and other materials selected by your instructor. These may include, but not limited to any of the following:

The greatest use of "e-reserves" is for journal articles and book chapters; the same types of materials you would find most frequently through traditional library reserves collections. These materials are scanned and then converted to a Portable Document File (PDF) format, which requires that you have the Adobe Acrobat Reader installed as a plug-in for your web browser. Some of the files, especially those with graphical elements, can be large. So, the faster your Internet connection, the better.


What kind of hardware, software, and software settings will I need to view electronic reserve material?

The minimum and recommended hardware/software requirements for retrieving and viewing electronic reserve materials are as follows:

Hardware:

Software:

Software settings:

The University Academic and Distributed Computing Services' Software Updates Server provides a good starting place for downloading all the software that you'll need, for both Apple and Windows operating systems.


Do I need a password to access electronic reserve?

Each course requires a unique password. This password will be supplied to students by the instructor and may appear on a course's syllabus or class website. If you do not know or forget your password, please contact your instructor.


How do I access the materials for my course?

There are a couple of possibilities here:

  1. Your instructor may provide a link from his or her course web page directly to the readings for your course (note: you will still need to enter a course level password) ; or
  2. You can access the home page for the system (http://eres.lib.umn.edu/) and choose your course from the list or use a series of searches to find your course. You may wish to bookmark the course in order to return to the course site more quickly in the future.


Can I print and download files from electronic reserve?

Yes, the Adobe Acrobat Reader allows you to view, navigate, print all or a portion of a PDF document, and download all of a PDF document across all major computer platforms. Please note: we use image software scanning which gives us the best quality document but also makes the file size larger. In order to minimize downloading time and failures, large documents are divided into smaller segments, which will need to be accessed separately.

To Print:
During the print command, you are asked whether you wish to print the complete document or wish to use the option of choosing the pages you want printed. This allows only the pages necessary for the users' research to be selected from the document. Within Adobe Reader, click on the printer icon to activate the print function. Options for either printing the entire document, or selected pages of documents, or the current page will appear.

To Download:
You may download e-reserve PDF files by first opening the document via the Adobe Acrobat Research through a web browser. Then use the "Save As" command from the File pulldown menu on the browser, which will prompt you to name and save the file. Make sure that you keep the .pdf extension as part of your file name. Remember that you will need to use Adobe Acrobat Reader to read or print a saved PDF file.

When I click on the e-reserve reading I want, my browser won't open the file. Why doesn't it work?

This indicates that the Adobe Acrobat Reader is probably not installed on your machine. You may download this software for free.


When I use Acrobat Reader, I can barely read the document on the screen because the type is so small. Do I have to print the document in order to read it?

The Acrobat Reader allows you to view documents at various magnifications (from 12% to 800% of the original size). To increase the magnification for onscreen viewing, click the little magnifying class with the plus sign (+) that appears on toolbar above the viewing window. Then move your cursor back onto the document. It should have turned from a hand into a magnifying glass. Now click on the document. It should be much bigger. Move the scroll bars on the right and bottom to see other parts of the page. To return the document to its original size, select the magnifying glass and Control-click (Windows) or Option-click (Apple). This causes the document to "zoom out".


When I print from Acrobat Reader, some, or all of the pages come out in mirror image. How can this be fixed?

Select the "Print As Image" option in the Adobe Acrobat Reader print window.



Who can I contact for additional help?

Good Question.

For help with your e-mail username and password, or for hardware and software questions, contact:
ADCS Technology Helpline

For all other questions about the electronic reserve system, contact:
Libraries' Ask Us!