Course Reserves: ARES and Brightspace

LIBRARY COURSE RESERVES (ARES) AND BRIGHTSPACE

Brightspace is an e-learning platform and online course management system provided to students and faculty for instructional purposes. All Brightspace courses and content are created, monitored, and managed by the instructor and not by the USC Libraries.

Library Course Reserves, which is also known as ARES, manages course reserves including electronic reserves and physical reserve requests. Maintained and operated by the Integrated Document Delivery (IDD) department, ARES differs from Brightspace as it is supported by USC Libraries staff to manage physical and electronic reserve requests obtainable and available from library resources. 

To include Library Course Reserves content to your Brightspace course, follow the steps on page below:

Using the USC Libraries’ ARES Course Reserves System in Brightspace

PLEASE NOTE: if you are an instructor who has previously used Library Course Reserves and has existing courses or courses from a previous semester, we encourage you to link the Brightspace to Library Course Reserves first and then add or request content and any other customizations needed from Brightspace.

If you are an instructor and are having problems with the Brightspace system, please contact university ITS support at (213) 740-5555 (Students dial 1; Instructors dial 2) or you can email brightspace@usc.edu.  

For all Brightspace help options, please visit:

Brightspace Help

PLEASE NOTE: USC IT Support will not be able to assist with any ARES-specific support issues such as broken links, missing PDFs, course start dates, early access, or other issues. In these cases, please contact us directly at idd@usc.edu or (213) 740-4020.

Advantages to using Library Course Reserves:

• Instructors can create a class, submit requests for readings, and submit requests for USC-owned items and/or their own personally owned books to be placed on reserve.
• Online course readings and other material can be easily accessed on one site.
• Class(es) and course content can be reinstated or "cloned" from one semester to another.
• Requests for course material can be submitted online, pulled from USC Libraries' collection, or processed through interlibrary loan (articles and chapters only) upon instructor request.
• Online course material accessible 7 days a week, 24 hours a day.
• Instructors can upload their own material such as the class syllabus, practice exams, or links to USC electronic databases or other online resources.
• USC Libraries' staff available to troubleshoot broken links to e-resources, PDFs, or webpages.

PLEASE NOTE: Due to copyright restrictions, we cannot post more than two chapters from the same book or two articles from the same issue.  Please see Copyright Guidelines & Rules for more information.  

COURSE READERS

If you need information about USC Bookstore's course reader and custom publishing options and services, please visit:

USC Custom Publishing.