Course reserves

Course reserves are instructor-selected materials made available to students through the Libraries free-of-charge.

Contact course reserves staff at coursematerials@umn.edu

Find and access course reserves

Find your reserves

Reserves can be found through your course’s Canvas page.  You must be logged in to your course page on Canvas to view your course reserves.

Select the Library Course Materials tab on the left-hand column of your Canvas course site to access available course materials.

Due to the ongoing pandemic, the Libraries are not currently offering print reserves at this time.

Save money on textbooks and course materials The Libraries provides a list of free required course materials available for U of M students to read online and to checkout.

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Set up reserves

Instructors, please do one of the following to request course reserves:

  • Submit requests using the course materials request form.
  • Email a reading list or syllabus to one of the online reserves sites, listing the citations in the desired display order.
  • Build a draft course reserves page through the Library Course Page in Canvas
    • Use the Library Course Materials Tool to start building your page. 
    • Final approval of these edits needs to be completed by course reserves staff.
    • After you are finished, send the list to the libraries using the “send” button at the top of the Library Course Page.

A note on physical/print reserves

Due to the extremely low usage of print reserves we are significantly reducing the number of print reserves we will accept, beginning in fall 2021. Our data shows that students will readily access digital materials but rarely checkout print/physical reserves. We want to provide students access to the materials you've chosen in the most convenient way possible for them. To do this we are going to license ebooks if possible or scan the materials to upload to Library Course Pages. If we are unable to accomplish this we will place the print/physical material on reserve and review the usage data at the end of the semester. If you have any questions about this please email coursematerials@umn.edu. 

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Related services

Course materials services

The Libraries have a number of ways to help instructors deliver course materials to their students including course reserves, E-text(s), articles, media, open education resources and more. 

Copyright permissions service

The copyright permissions service assists faculty and staff at the University of Minnesota in acquiring permissions to use copyrighted items in their scholarship, course websites, coursepacks, Libraries Course Reserve, and other University-related purposes.

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