Ares Course Reserves: General Information

On the course start date, materials in Course Reserves become available to students. Items remain available to students while the Blackboard course is live. Ares stores items for five years after the course ends, but these materials are not publicly available unless the course runs again. 

By default, Ares lists your Reserve items alphabetically by title. (Items default back to alphabetical-by-title listing upon leaving Ares.)

To sort by author, click the column heading “Author”.

Clicking a column heading will sort by that column alphabetically.

Faculty & staff can request reserve items be made available to their students in two formats:

1. Hardcopy Format to be made available at the Library.
2. Digital or Electronic Format to be uploaded and made available to the student via Ares Course Reserves in Blackboard.

Electronic reserve requests (uploaded files) submitted by faculty/staff will generally be processed within 1 to 2 working days. 

For requests that exceed the Fair Dealing guidelines, contact copyright@jibc.ca.  Posting of materials may be delayed 2-4 weeks for processing of requests that require permission.

Links will be processed and posted immediately. 

Instructors can check the status of a request by logging into Ares, clicking on their course, and viewing the far-right column under Status.  

Students can only view items once they become Available.

Here is a list of some typical statuses you might see:

Awaiting Reserves Processing - Request has been submitted and is pending review by Library staff.

Item Available on Electronic Reserves - Item has been posted and is accessible. If link to item is not working, please contact copyright@jibc.ca as soon as possible.

Item Available at JIBC Library- Item has been submitted, processed, and is available at the JIBC Library on Print Reserve.

Item Activation Pending - Item has been submitted, processed, and will be available on the class start date. If your students need access prior to the course start date, please contact the Library.

Awaiting Supply by Instructor - Item has been submitted and is pending receipt by the JIBC Library.  This refers to requests that either 1) still need to be scanned and uploaded by the instructor, or 2) the physical item needs to be received by the Library from the instructor, so that it can be made available on Print Reserve for viewing by students.

Item Cancelled by Staff - A requested reserve item may be cancelled by Library staff.  Reasons may include non-compliance with Copyright Guidelines.

1. From the My Courses page, select the course you want to track for Reserve Usage.
2. Click the Reserve Item Usage action on the Instructor Class Tools or Proxy Class Tools menu.
3. A Reserve Items grid below the Class Details lists each Reserve item along with Title, Author and Usage.
4. The Usage column tracks the number of times a Reserve Item has been viewed. 

Adding Tags to items in Ares allows you to customize your own sorting method. Items may have multiple tags.

To enter tags, they must be applied to individual items—this cannot be done in bulk. 

Separate multiple tags by commas. Example: Week 4, Leadership Skills.