Electronic Reserves

SUMMARY

At Rutgers University Libraries, the traditional reserve collection has migrated to a paperless electronic reserve service. To justify the change, Library Staff used two methodologies: a user survey and an analysis of reserve collections broken down by location and format, with circulation figures for each category. This change was made in stages; electronic reserves went to a digital only service. Librarians at Rutgers University are using electronic reserve services to gain experience with digital collections, homegrown and commercial databases, collections for distance education, and materials and services to remote users. In this paper we also look at some of the factors affecting academic reserve operations.

Key Words:

• Electronic reserves
• traditional reserves
• digital collections