Scanning a Textbook For Students

Access to course readings may be difficult for students at the beginning of the semester due to shipping delays, limited stock, campus closures, and other issues. Faculty may request a limited number of scanned chapters from textbooks to help provide initial access to course readings while students obtain their textbook readings during the first few weeks of classes.

Please complete the Textbook Scanning Request Form to have the library scan chapter(s) of textbook(s) on reserve. You may search the library collection on OneSearch to check if your textbook is on reserve in the library.

Have questions? Contact Megan Ozeran.

Requests

• Due to copyright law, the library cannot make complete scans of textbooks.

• All material is scanned and emailed to your LRCCD email when it is ready.

• Requests are typically processed within one week.

• Requests are not filled on weekends, non-instructional days, nor holidays.

• Digitized titles shall be made accessible via the faculty member’s Canvas course page and shall only be available to students enrolled in the course for the current semester.

• All documents will be scanned with OCR text recognition and meet the Adobe Acrobat PDF accessibility check.

If the Library does not own a title you are requesting, you may scan a reasonable portion to compensate for the fact that students cannot currently access library reserves under fair use guidelines. You may wish to review the Fair Use Evaluator to help you determine fairness of the use of materials. We suggest you scan no more than the first two weeks' worth of material, which should allow students time to acquire the textbook on their own.

When you share the scanned material with students, please also post the copyright notice page (see below), which contains important information for students about how to use and dispose of the scan. Please only distribute these scans to students using your course site on Canvas to ensure that access is limited to those enrolled in the course. 

If you don't have a traditional scanner, you can use a smart phone to scan pages into a pdf file. Adobe has a free app available for both Android and iOS, and you can read their FAQ about Adobe Scan.

Notice Concerning Copyright and Accessibility
This material may be protected by copyright laws (Title 17, US Code). This copy is provided in accordance with the principles of fair use and is not intended for further distribution.

The library or instructor has made efforts to produce a document accessible to screen readers, but cannot guarantee full accessibility. If you need assistance with accessibility, please contact Disability Support Programs Services (DSPS) or your college library.

Other Academic Resources

You may also want to take this opportunity to explore different resources that will fulfill the same academic need as the original textbook.

The Los Rios libraries pay for access to excellent and wide-ranging research so that it can be used by anyone affiliated with the Los Rios colleges. Explore the Library’s Research Databases for relevant material, or reach out to the librarians for help.

Additionally, there are growing numbers of excellent Open Educational Resources that are freely available online. Many of these resources can act as direct replacements for commercial textbooks, and they are always zero cost. If you need help searching for OER, you can always ask the librarians.