On or off the Slate: University Library E-Reserve Supports Web-Based Learning

Ryerson University Library in Toronto, Canada, embarked on an E-Reserve pilot project in 2004, providing electronic links to journal articles and scanned documents for course readings. Insufficient time allowed by faculty for copyright clearance, excessive copyright cost and the difficulty of achieving a single sign-on by users to access e-Reserve in Blackboard, the University’s courseware, were the major issues. Despite setbacks, E-Reserve continued to undertake innovative projects, using the new E-Reserve module in Blackboard to integrate course readings with faculty course pages, utilizing SFX open linking to connect citations to full-text articles, and experimenting with Web streaming of videos in Blackboard.