Course Materials and Reserves
If you're a faculty member or instructor, we can help you make course materials available for your classes during the 2020–2021 academic year.
Preparing to offer course materials online
Because the pandemic will limit our capacity to offer physical course reserves, we encourage faculty to use digital course materials wherever possible.
To provide equitable access to course materials, we encourage faculty to use open access or library-licensed course materials whenever possible. Instructors should use Canvas to make materials available to students.
Please note that most textbooks are often unavailable for library licensing, and present unique challenges for electronic access and affordability.
There are several ways you can find, request, and access digital resources for your courses — and we’re here to help.
Finding electronic materials
Search the library catalog to find digital versions of books, films, and other media.
See how to access online materials from our catalog, along with expanded access to items in the HathiTrust Digital Library.
In addition to searching for particular items in our catalog, you can use databases or Library Articles Search to find ebooks, articles, streaming media, and other materials for your students.
To ensure compliance with copyright law and licensing agreements, please link to content from your Canvas site, rather than uploading PDFs downloaded from databases. (And make sure your links are persistent and proxied, so they work seamlessly for your students.)
Feeling overwhelmed and not sure where to start? Contact your subject specialist to learn about electronic resources in your discipline.
For materials we don’t have electronically
If you need materials the library does not appear to hold electronically, we can:
- Verify whether the library has access
- Purchase electronic versions of materials
- Help identify suitable alternatives
- Scan or digitize selections for use in Canvas
How to request materials
Complete this request form as soon as possible.
We will work on requests in the order they are received. We may contact you to discuss your request if copyright or other constraints affect what we can digitize.
If you know you need one of the following formats, you can place requests directly:
- For articles and book chapters, please place a scan request.
- For help with film and video, contact the Askwith Media Library.
- For special collections items, contact the Special Collections Research Center.
- For maps, contact the Clark Library.
General questions? Contact us at course-materials-support@umich.edu.
