About: Policies

Fall 2020 Building Access Policy:

The library building is open to Manhattan College students, faculty, staff, and administrators ONLY.  Regular Access Policies have been temporarily suspended due to COVID-19

***Off-campus access to library material requires a Jaspernet username and password***

Filming in the Library

• Requests to film in the library from commercial groups outside of Manhattan College require approval from the Marketing and Communications Office.

• Requests from students to film in the library for personal or academic projects must ask permission at the Circulation Desk on the 5th floor.

Gifts (Donations) Policy

The Library will be glad to accept donations (gifts) of 30 or fewer books and/or DVDs.  We are not accepting donations of journal/magazine issues or other media such as videocassettes or CDs.  Gifts are accepted with the understanding that all ownership rights held by the donor are transferred to the Library, and that the Library may dispose of gift items in any way -- by adding them to the library collection, giving them to other libraries, selling them, or discarding them, among other things.

The Library does not accept large donations -- more than 30 items -- due to the high cost of processing and evaluating them. For donations of 30 or fewer books and/or DVDs, please contact Susanne Markgren, Assistant Director of the Library for Technical Services at susanne.markgren@manhattan.edu, or 718-862-7997.

Online Textbooks in the Library Collection

Faculty often request that the Library acquire electronic versions of the textbooks used in their courses. Unfortunately, that option is not available for many of the more prominent textbook publishers. Specifically, publishers such as Cengage, McGraw-Hill, Oxford University Press, and Pearson will not allow libraries to acquire e-book versions of their textbooks.

Unlike print books, e-books are invariably licensed rather than sold. That allows publishers to restrict

• who can license the content
• who can access the content, and for how long
• the extent to which users can read, download, copy, and print chapters, pages, or excerpts of the text.

Many publishers have found that they can maximize revenue by marketing their products solely to individual users.

Students in courses that use these textbooks must purchase print copies, if they’re available, or acquire the e-books directly from the publishers or their agents. In some cases, the Library can acquire print copies for Course Reserve, but we cannot normally afford more than one copy of each text.

We encourage faculty to investigate alternatives such as

• using textbooks from publishers that allow libraries to license their products
• using books that are suitable for course instruction but marketed and sold as conventional books rather than textbooks
• using open educational resources (OERs)--online textbooks and instructional materials that are freely available online
• within Moodle, posting or linking to individual chapters and articles to the extent allowed by the Fair Use and Educational Use provisions of copyright law.
• working with the subject librarians to identify alternatives to the textbooks available from publishers such as Cengage, McGraw-Hill, and Pearson.

Open Educational Resources are especially attractive to many faculty, since they are freely available online without restrictions on access, use, downloading, or printing.

The Mason OER Metafinder of George Mason University can be used to identify OER textbooks and other instructional materials in a wide range of subject areas.

SUNY OER Services also provides a rapidly growing set of OER texts, videos, interactive exercises, problem sets, and assignments.

Reserve Policy

Fall 2020 Course Reserve Updates

• Due to current decontamination guidelines for physical books, the circulation of print Course Reserve material is suspended until further notice.
• If you need assistance acquiring excerpts from books for your Moodle site, please contact circulation@manhattan.edu
• DVD’s that are on reserve still circulate. Their loan period is now 24 hours.

   
Placing Materials on Reserve: 

• A Reserve Request Form is needed for each item.
• Reserve requests for items in the library's collection should be submitted at least one week before they will be needed. Items not in the library's collection should be requested even earlier, as it may take several weeks to order and process. 
• Reserve requests need to be submitted and updated each semester.
• For information on adding, or linking, material to your Moodle Course click here.
• Personal copies are no longer being accepted. If you wish to place a book or DVD on course reserve that the library does not own, you can either 1) request that we purchase a copy using the purchase request form, or 2) donate your personal copy to the library.

Copyright Guidelines for Reserve Material:

• U.S. copyright law governs the reproduction of copyrighted materials. 
• The Fair Use and Educational Use provisions of copyright law allow materials to be reproduced in many cases. There are cases in which the copyright holder’s permission is required.
• Reproducing electronic material may be limited by copyright law and/or license agreements. 

If you have any questions, please contact the Access Services Librarian.

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