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About Course Reserves

The UCLA Library's course reserves service provides access to course materials through the Library. When an instructor makes a course reserve request, materials are relocated to the circulation desk of the library specified in the request. Each course reserve item has a loan period of 2 hours. This guarantees that students have fair access to the materials throughout the duration of the course.

Many reserve items are materials already owned by the Library. If the Library does not own the materials, we will work with you to purchase them.

Types of Reserves

Our reserves include:

  • General Reserves: Items on reserve for a single quarter.
  • Permanent Reserves: Items that are rare, out-of-print or on reserve for more than one quarter.
  • Personal Copies / Faculty Copies: Items not owned or purchased by the Library but held temporarily for reserves.
  • Course Readers / APS Readers: Paper-bound collections of materials that are selected and arranged by an instructor for a particular class.
  • Building Use Only: Rare, fragile or special collections items that do not circulate and can only be used at or behind a circulation desk.
  • Electronic Reserves: Items made available online.
    • These materials do not have loan periods enforced by the library, but may have user-access limits enforced by the license.
    • Instructors are advised to use electronic resources already licensed by the Library or Open Educational Resources. If no such resources meet the needs of the course, instructors may request scanned portions of the material be placed on reserve. Instructors are responsible for ensuring their requested scanning and use of materials satisfies fair use guidelines. See the University of California Office of the President Fair Use Guidance webpage(opens in a new tab) for more information.

Accessing Reserves

  • UC Library Search: Items can be viewed through UC Library Search(opens in a new tab) by searching the instructor name, department name or course number.
  • In-Person: Items will be made available for check out at library circulation desks.
  • Bruin Learn: Instructors can create and manage course reading lists directly from their Bruin Learn sites. This helps make course reserve materials more accessible to students and streamlines the reserve request process. Please see our Leganto guide(opens in a new tab) to learn more about how to use Bruin Learn for course reserves.

Submitting Course Reserves

Please submit course reserve requests using our online form(opens in a new tab) at least 3 weeks before classes begin. This allows us time to process the materials and purchase titles not owned by the library (purchases may take 4-6 weeks).

Unless otherwise specified, course reserve requests are active for one quarter. After that, the items will be removed from reserve shelves and will no longer appear as associated with a course on UC Library Search or Bruin Learn.

If your course is taught for more than one quarter in an academic year, you may indicate that in your request. In this case, the reading list expiration date will be extended and you will not need to resubmit the request the following quarter.

Contact Course Reserves Staff


Library and Subject AreasContact
Arts Library

Art, Art History, Art & Architecture,
Design & Media Arts, Film & Television,
Theater, World Arts & Culture
(310) 206-2868

arts-circ@library.ucla.edu(opens in a new tab)

Charles E. Young Research Library
and Richard C. Rudolph
East Asian Library


Graduate Courses
(310) 825-4732

yrl-circ@library.ucla.edu(opens in a new tab)

Eugene and Maxine Rosenfeld
Management Library


Management
(310) 825-2620

mgt-rsrv@library.ucla.edu(opens in a new tab)

Hugh and Hazel Darling Law Library

Law
(310) 825-3960

reserve@law.ucla.edu(opens in a new tab)

Instructional Media Collections and Services

Film Courses

(310) 825-0755
imlib@teaching.ucla.edu(opens in a new tab)

Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library

Nursing, Dentistry, Medicine, and
Public Health
(310) 825-5126

biomed-access@library.ucla.edu(opens in a new tab)

Music Library

Music, Musicology, Music Industry, Ethnomusicology
(310) 825-2317

music-circ@library.ucla.edu(opens in a new tab)

Powell Library

Undergraduate Courses
(310) 206-4272

college-reserves@library.ucla.edu(opens in a new tab)

Science and Engineering Library

Math, Engineering, Physics, Chemistry, Computer Science
(310) 825-4951

sem-circ@library.ucla.edu(opens in a new tab)


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