Pitts Quick Links
Faculty Support for Course Reserves
Pitts Theology Library will put materials on reserve for any course offered through Candler School of Theology or the Graduate Division of Religion.
Books and other physical items are available for students to check out at the Pitts Theology Library circulation desk. Course Reserves, Emory's reserves management software, provides your students with information on physical reserves available at the library and the convenience of online materials, such as articles, digitized book chapters, websites, and streaming films.
Reserve materials are preserved for future use and can be reactivated in subsequent semesters, greatly reducing the time and effort needed to prepare for classes.
Request Physical Items (Books & DVDs) for Your Course
- All required and recommended textbooks submitted to the Emory Barnes & Noble will be pulled automatically and put on reserve for 3 hour loans (master's level courses) or 24 hour loans (doctoral level courses). Students will need to bring the call number of the book they wish to use to the circulation desk at Pitts Theology Library to check it out.
- Reactivate readings from a previous class within Course Reserves - Video Instructions
- Place a request in discoverE - Video Instructions
- Place a request from within Course Reserves - Video Instructions (first 2 minutes)
Add Electronic Items to Your Course
- Reactivate readings from a previous class within Course Reserves - Video Instructions
- Place a request in discoverE - Video Instructions
- Request digitization of book excerpts by indicating the page range or chapter title in the request form
- Use the Articles tab in discoverE to request articles from the library's databases
- Upload electronic readings to Course Reserves - Video Instructions
- Request a personal training session on using Course Reserves from the Reserves Specialist.
Streaming Films
- Swank Digital Campus: Popular films & some documentaries
- These are only available to your specific students, and expire after one semester
- New Day Films: Documentaries
- These will be purchased for five years at a time, and will be made available to the entire Emory community
- If you find a film you'd like to assign for your students to watch, send the Reserves Specialist the title of the film and whether you located it at Swank or New Day Films. The film will be available to your students under Library Course Reserves within two business days.
- If you'd like to use a film that's not available from Swank or New Day, the lead time will be much longer, so plan ahead; licensing agreements with individual production companies often takes 6-8 weeks.
Organize Your Reserves
- Tag readings so students can easily filter them by date, topic, or other criteria - PDF Instructions
- Drag and drop readings to put them in a particular order; be sure to click "Save Order" at the top for the changes to stick
- Click "Switch to Student Mode" from the menu on the left to see the page as your students will see it. You won't be able to add readings from the student mode.
Copyright Considerations
Copyright Content placed on Course Reserves and Canvas must comply with U.S. Copyright law.
Library staff review all materials uploaded to Course Reserves in order to determine if those materials fall within Fair Use and our license agreements. The library will seek and pay copyright permissions for materials when appropriate based on our guidelines.
If you are a Canvas user interested in posting content (journal articles, book chapters, etc.) for which you do not own the copyright, please work through the Course Reserves system, and our library staff will assist you with permissions, fair use, public domain, and other issues. All courses reserves class materials are automatically accessible through Canvas. For more information, see Emory Universitiy Libraries' Reserves & Copyright page.
If you have specific questions about how to remain copyright compliant when building your list of reserve readings, please do not hesitate to contact the Reserves Specialist.
How long will it take the library to process my request?
We process requests in the order in which we receive them. Turnaround times vary depending on the size and complexity of the request and on the volume of requests that we are working to fulfill at any given time.
Any electronic items you upload or link to Course Reserves yourself will be immediately available if the course is in session. All items uploaded between sessions will be activated automatically about a week before classes begin.
Physical books that are available at Pitts or Woodruff will typically be processed within five business days. If they are checked out to someone else or are missing or located at another branch, they may take two weeks or more to obtain.
Readings digitized by the library will be available 10 days before the reading is due in class if we are working from your syllabus, or by the Needed By date you indicate in your request.
At the beginning of the semester please allow two weeks for reserve items to be processed. The best approach is to turn your request in as early as possible to give library staff plenty of time to fully and accurately process your request.
Library Course Reserves
Course Reserves is a reserves management system created by Atlas Systems. All courses are automatically created in both Course Reserves and Canvas, and reserve materials are easily accessible through both systems. All courses, instructors and student enrollments are fed into Course Reserves by the Registrars’ office, so instructors and students will automatically see their classes when they log in.
Course Reserves: Log in using your NetID and password. Your courses with reserves will appear; previous and future courses can be found under the "Previous Courses" and "Upcoming Courses" links. Click on the link to each course to view the list of readings and films.
Canvas: Log in to Canvas and navigate to the course you wish to see. Click "Library Course Reserves" from the menu on the left to view the list of readings and films.
Periodic information and training sessions on the functions of Library Course Reserves are offered for you and/or your graduate assistants. Please contact the Reserves Specialist if you are interested in training.
Help/Contact Information
For further information or assistance, please contact Elizabeth Miller at Pitts Theology Library by phone (404.727.5535) or email (elizabeth.miller@emory.edu).