Reserve lending at Canterbury University: an overview of the restricted loans department

Philip Jane - Restricted Loans Librarian, Canterbury University

Abstract
Most tertiary libraries, whether university or college, need to address the problem of meeting the needs of a large number of students all requiring the same material. While the two parts to this problem, high demand and high volume, may be exacerbated by the increasing number of students in tertiary institutions and the rising prices of textbooks, an underlying cause is the provision of reading lists by teaching staff. A general discussion of the philosophy of reserve collections is followed by a description of how the University of Canterbury Library in New Zealand deals with high demand materials, and focuses on the role an automated library system can play in this. Particular attention is given to the potential of the newly implemented library system, Horizon, with a brief discussion of electronic reserve.