Electronic reserves: the changing landscape of instructional support.

During the spring 1996 academic semester, the University of Maryland Health Sciences Library implemented an electronic course-reserve system as a pilot project with the university's School of Nursing. The pilot project has been very successful because of thorough planning and the effectiveness of the system, which enables library users to retrieve assigned readings easily. This success inspired the staff to begin expanding the scope of the pilot project to include other schools and limited remote access. This paper describes the planning and implementation process, the issues that needed to be resolved, the response to the project, and future plans. Particular attention is paid to issues of copyright and cost recovery.