Limited capacity

The Courtright Memorial Library will be open to Otterbein community members only beginning in August 2020. All Otterbein patrons must comply with the University Health Assessment policy and the Cardinal Community Responsibilities. Like most other Ohio businesses, we will be limiting our building capacity.

Library staff will be counting patrons as they enter and exit the building to ensure we don’t go over our new capacity. Patrons may be stopped at our entrance and asked to wait for another patron to leave the library before they enter.

If you have a class occurring in the library or a meeting with ASC/CTL staff, please notify with the library staff member on duty.

Seating changes, Limited seating

In order to encourage social distancing, we have partnered with Otterbein’s Environmental Health & Safety Officer (EHS) and ITS on campus to limit our desktop computer terminals and tabletop seating.

We ask that you not move/remove X’s on tables or signs that limit seating and that you only sit in seats that indicate they are available.

Changes to Traffic Patterns

As we only have one main stairwell throughout our different floors, we ask that our patrons move quickly and not loiter on our stairs. Our book stacks will not have one-way aisles, but we do ask that you be aware of others that are in an aisle before entering and mind social distance guidelines.

Our patrons will enter the building through the sliding doors facing Main St. and enter and exit the library properly via our interior sliding doors. Patrons should exit the building by following the pathway indicated to allow for social distancing at all entry points. 

Library staff will be limiting our direct face-to-face contact with patrons but that doesn’t mean we won’t be available to help you.

Our Reference/Research Help services will be completely virtual during Fall 2020. Services include virtual office hours, research consultations, chat, text, or email. Library staff will respond in that same format or set up an immediate Microsoft Teams or Blackboard Collaborate session to discuss your research needs. You can always Ask a Librarian for help.

Self-Check Out

At the self-checkout station, patrons will be able to scan their own Cardinal Card and items with a staff member ensuring the transaction go through, all from at least 6 feet away from other people.

How to Reach Us

Reference/Research Help

• Text a Librarian: 614-259-7404
• Email: library@otterbein.edu
• Chat us from the library’s website

Circulation/Your Library Account

• Call 614-823-1215 ext. 4
• Email: circ@otterbein.edu

We know our students and faculty greatly depend on Course Reserve materials and this service is part of our continued commitment to textbook affordability and universal access. In Fall 2020, the loan period for all 2-hour course reserves (those already on reserve and incoming requests) will be temporarily changed from 2 hours to 1 day and all returned library materials will be quarantined for 3 days prior to processing and re-circulation (in accordance to results from the REALM report and Ohio library standards). Please continue to follow current public health standards and recommendations when engaging with library materials. 

To increase opportunities for access to our Course Reserve collection, library staff will be accepting requests to digitize specific chapters or sections of textbooks in our Course Reserve collection (see more information in the Copyright During a Pandemic section below). Please note that due to the creative nature of these works we are unable to digitize novels and popular press. See the Course Reserve webpage for full information on this temporary process.

Faculty

Check with the Library

The Courtright Memorial Library, in partnership with several state-wide consortia, provides digital access to thousands of items. If you’re searching for new content or want to make sure your students can access the content you’ve already selected, start with the library catalog. You can also reach out to your liaison librarian or the Technical Services Coordinator. You’ll find both our physical and digital resources, which can be used on and off-campus!

If you still can’t find it

Submit the request for your item via our Acquisition Request Form, and include your course info and any other needs. Our Technical Services Coordinator begins by looking for academically licensed digital content (from eBooks to streaming video) across our approved vendors and resource partners. If there aren’t digital versions available, we will buy a print copy and work with our circulation staff to follow our revised course reserves process.

OER content is your friend

Particularly during the pandemic, using materials that are open access makes the course content readily available. If you want to use open-access materials and you aren’t sure where to start, please reach out to your liaison librarian or look at the Open Access LibGuide.

Other Digital Options

Many companies offer digital options related to the rental or purchase of textbooks. While these may not be the best, most cost-effective option, given complexities in licensing, they may sometimes be the only option for the selected textbooks. ·

• Otterbein Bookstore
• RedShelf
• VitalSource
• Perusall

Can I Scan and Share with My Students?

If you own a copy of the textbook and have access to either a working scanner or if you can take photos with a phone by downloading a scanning app, you can scan pages of the personal textbook copy and share them with your class via Blackboard (which has login protection to source content). Just remember to take them down at the end of the term! · Using Google Drive · Using Evernote

Accessibility Considerations

Remember when sharing PDFs or other documentation, they should be run through Adobe or Word accessibility checking tools to ensure they are usable by everyone. For more information, you can see the Accessibility Libguide.

Students

Free Textbooks (Open Source Materials)

Once you have your syllabus, you can check to see if the materials are available free at one of the below frequently used sites:

• Open Textbook Library via the University of Minnesota All of these textbooks are under a Creative Commons license and are free to use and download. Many are peer-reviewed by professors who have used these books in their classes. ·
• OpenStax via Rice University Freely licensed textbooks available to read online or download in multiple formats, including some classroom resources as well.
• Directory of Open Access Books This directory includes peer-reviewed books published under open access licenses by academic publishers

Electronic Textbook Providers

Many companies offer digital options related to the rental or purchase of textbooks. While these may not be the best, most cost-effective option, given complexities in licensing, they may sometimes be the only option for the selected textbooks. Many titles come with rentals for 90-180 days as well as purchase options. ·

• Otterbein Bookstore
• RedShelf
• VitalSource

General Workflows

Library staff will continue to follow workflows developed during the Spring/Summer 2020 terms. Requests for electronic course reserves will be managed with little deviation from standard practice, including the following steps:

• Seeking out materials that are temporarily or freely available. This may include open access journals, subscription materials in the Libraries’ collections, or the HathiTrust Emergency Temporary Access Service program.
• Where necessary and as budgets allow, seeking to purchase or license materials.
• Rely on fair use (17 U.S. Code § 107) to make available through a password-protected system only as much of the material as necessary to support instructors’ pedagogical aims in a way that will not undermine the commercial market. Library staff may be more flexible on a case-by-case basis in evaluating fair use while physical reserves are inaccessible, taking into account factors such as limited access to the commercial market. We will also consider how fair use may receive a broader analysis during the pandemic, according to the Public Statement of Library Copyright Specialists.
• At the conclusion of the academic year, it will be necessary to undergo an evaluation of reserve materials to further assess adherence to copyright law; for instance, it may be necessary to make available a smaller portion of a book or journal issue to adhere to fair use.

Special cases: Textbooks

By relying on Sections 108 and 109 of U.S. Copyright Law, the Libraries have long provided access to print copies of textbooks that have been purchased or donated. By doing this, our collections offer an alternative or “backup” for students who may be on campus without a textbook or, in some cases, may not be able to afford to purchase a textbook. Typically, these materials are placed on physical reserve for short-term checkout.

• In consideration of the fair use exception to U.S. copyright law, limited portions of textbooks can be requested through e-reserves. This does not include consumable materials, such as workbooks or lab manuals. All copies will include a copyright notice.
• We recommend that students request only those portions necessary for their course of study.
• If the library owns copies in electronic format, we will not scan it but rather direct users to that library copy.
• Only books that are part of the library collection may be made available.
• Scans of texts are not meant to replace the purchase of materials.
• Access to electronic reserves will be limited to students currently enrolled in the relevant course, and all electronic reserves material digitized from print will be hosted on a secure, password-protected site.
  • The system we will use sets viewing limits to the requested content and requires password authentication.
• Copies will be made available for a limited time. On that happy day when the pandemic status ends and quarantine is lifted, all scanned files will be deleted and the special digital access program will cease.

Special cases: Novels & Popular Press Books

• For course required materials that are not textbooks (novels or popular press books), please check our catalog to see if we own an eBook copy.
• If we do not, we strongly recommend making use of our local public libraries to obtain these materials. Public libraries provide digital access to numerous novels and popular press titles via Overdrive or Hoopla. If you do not have a library card for either Westerville Public Library or Columbus Metropolitan Library, both libraries have applications online and will contact you within 48-72 hours with your library account number.

Special cases: Video

As in the case of textbooks, the Libraries have long made film and video collections available via VHS and currently through DVD. U.S. Copyright Law, in Section 110(1), explicitly allows for student viewing of film content in the face-to-face classroom, without any additional licensing cost to the instructor or institution and without requiring each student to rent or purchase the film.

With a rise in online and hybrid courses, instructors and students increasingly need to access film and video in a digital context, a need provided for in Section 107 and Section 110(2). Before and during the COVID crisis, the Libraries have leveraged our resources where feasible to license or purchase streaming media content; however, this option is frequently unavailable altogether or at a reasonable price relative to the Libraries’ materials budget.

Currently, the library is limited in how it can support video on reserve.

• a. Is this video already available on a streaming platform available at Otterbein? The Technical Services Coordinator and/or department liaison can check.
• b. If not, The Technical Services Coordinator will seek to identify a free or reasonably priced licensed copy of the item.
• c. Should a copy be unavailable, the Technical Services Coordinator will let the instructor know if the requested video has streaming access through a subscription service or pay per view.
• d. If a video is completely unavailable, the library liaison along with the Technical Services Coordinator will assist in looking for possible alternatives.
• e. If we do not own a copy, we strongly recommend making use of our local public libraries to obtain these materials. Public libraries provide digital access to numerous novels and popular press titles via Hoopla. If you do not have a library card for either Westerville Public Library or Columbus Metropolitan Library, both libraries have applications online and will contact you within 48-72 hours with your library account number.

As always, Library personnel will continue to assist instructors in understanding the legal use of online video content from YouTube or other sources.

Note: this document relies heavily on the work shared from the University of Florida Course Reserves page, accessed 7/20/2020