Services for Online Classes: Ares Course Reserves

The Miami University Libraries' e-reserves service supports classroom teaching in a manner consistent with copyright law. These guidelines are not intended to be exhaustive, but to provide direction.

Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976 provides four factors to be applied to determine whether the use made of any work is "fair use":

• The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;

• The nature of the copyrighted work;

• The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and

• The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

To ensure that the Libraries are in compliance with the letter and spirit of the U.S. copyright law:

• Materials will be placed on reserve at the initiative of the faculty for the sole purpose of educational use.

• In compliance with the third fair use factor, longer works, such as complete books or substantial portions of works, will not be copied for electronic reserve service without obtaining copyright permission.

• In compliance with the second and fourth fair use factor, textbooks or portions of textbooks are not eligible for inclusion in Miami’s e-reserves system.

• Access to materials in the e-reserve system will be limited to students enrolled in the course with which they are associated.

• At the end of each course, all materials will be automatically removed from reserves to ensure no further access to the material.

The first step in incorporating course reserves into your Canvas course is to add the Ares course reserves tool to your class. Simply follow the following steps:

1. Open your course in Canvas
2. Click on settings
3. Click on navigation
4. Drag Ares Course Reserves from the item hidden from students to the area
5. Click on Ares-Course Reserves in the navigation area of your Canvas course
6. Select the semester of the course being added to Ares
7. You have now added your course to the Ares system.

After adding the course to the system, send your list of readings to Andy Revelle (revellaa@miamioh.edu) in the libraries. The libraries will locate the items and attempt to secure any necessary copyright clearance.

Linking Items in Ares in other areas of Canvas

Once an item has been posted to Ares course reserves, you can link that item in other areas of Canvas. This allows instructors to include course readings in the corresponding course module. When a student clicks on the link to an item housed in Ares, they will be required to log in using their Miami UniqueID and password. In this way, Ares maintains copyright compliance while allowing integration of course readings into the main course content.

There are two main types of resources included in Ares: uploaded PDF scans and links to items held in Miami's electronic collections. 

Finding a link to uploaded PDFs is simple; the Ares item record contains a permanent link which can be copied and pasted into your modules. 

Ares records that are links to items in Miami collections do not have that permanent link. What you need to do is to right click (command + click or two-finger click on a Mac laptop's trackpad) on the "View Item" link and then select copy link (on the Mac) or copy link address (on Windows).