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Student Information

The purpose of Electronic Course Reserves is to make reserve materials available 24 hours, 7 days a week anywhere in the world and also to expand the kinds of materials instructors can currently place on reserve. 

Users may view and print or save for later use course materials which instructors wish to make available to students. The current system includes sample exams, lecture notes, journal articles, book chapters, images, course syllabi, and assignments. No copies of entire books are available in electronic reserve. These may still be checked out at the reserve desk. 

We hope that students will find this a time saver and a more complete resource than the traditional reserve desk. Also, feel free to give us feedback. 

  • How do I find material my professor has put on electronic reserve?
Electronic Course Reserves will be available to students officially enrolled in a class that is participating in this pilot project. Your professor has been given a userid and password for each course that will have items on electronic reserve. Your professor is the only person who can give you this information. Once you have a userid and password be aware that these are "case sensitive" so you must enter them exactly as they are given to you. You may access e-Reserves through the Blackboard Logon page. If you need any other assistance, please call Firestone Library Reserves Desk at (609) 258-3224 or write to ereserves@princeton.edu.
  • Why do I need a userid and password?
All items are restricted to protect the copyright holder and require the use of a userid and password to access them. The materials are to be used for course purpose only and the person using these materials assumes liability for any infringements of copyright law. 
  • What kind of hardware/software will I need to view the electronic reserve material? 


    • To view Electronic Course Reserve documents, you will need: 

    • A Windows PC or a Macintosh 
    • Netscape or other World Wide Web client. Netscape is available (for students, faculty, and staff) through Princeton's Office of Information Technology.
    • A copy of the DjVu Browser Plug-in for Windows or Macintosh. This plug-in is already installed on computers at the public computing sites maintained by OIT and/or the public workstations within the Library system. 
    • A copy of Adobe Acrobat Reader for Windows or Macintosh. This plug-in is already installed on computers at the public computing sites maintained by OIT and/or the public workstations within the Library system. 
The majority of the files in the Electronic Course Reserve System are Acrobat PDF and LizardTech DjVu files, which may be viewed using either Adobe Acrobat Reader or the DjVu Browser Plug-in. Acrobat and DjVu allow the handling of a variety of types of materials including those containing graphs, charts, and mathematical symbols as well as print and images. Both programs retain the original format of the document and prevents users from modifying or reusing parts of a document. The Acrobat and DjVu Readers are distributed free of charge. 

If you are working on a computer which does not have the Acrobat Reader and/or DjVu installed and want to access these readings from your home, you will need to install the Acrobat Reader and/or DjVu on your computer. The software can be downloaded from the web at no charge. You will then need to install the Acrobat Reader as a plug-in on your own web browser, as well as the DjVu Browser Plug-in.

  • How do I retrieve files in Electronic Course Reserves? 


    • At the Electronic Course Reserve Authenication page, enter the userid and password your professor has given you. A copyright notice will appear, you must accept the responsiblities stated before the course listing will be displayed. A list of the items that are available electronically for that particular course will display. Click on a title to retrieve the file. You can also access ereserves through your course Blackboard site.

Understanding Copyright Fair Use Principles: 

Many of your course readings, such as journal articles, may be copyrighted materials. These materials are identified with a copyright notice. As a reader of these documents, you are encouraged to comply with fair use. Fair Use guidelines suggest the following: 

  • You may make one copy (e.g., copy to disk or print) for your own personal reading, research, or education. Any other use without permission from the copyright holder is illegal. Making multiple copies for republication or distribution to others would be in violation of Fair Use principles and practice. 

  • Any copy that is made should preserve the author's name, the title of the document, and a statement of copyright, if there is one. 

  • You must not use any of these documents to mislead others about the views or competence of the author, nor as part of a commercial product.

Other readings may be linked to full text journals available online from sources such as JSTOR and Project Muse or linked to other Internet sites. 
  • How do I view files in Electronic Course Reserves? 
NOTE: If you need help with DjVu, open a course document, right click anywhere in the viewing window and select Help.

Zoom

The zoom factor (magnification) can be any number from 5% to 999% and refers to the magnification of the physical dimensions of the image. The plug-in tries to compute the actual scaling coefficients taking into account the display and image DPI (Dots Per Inch) information. For example, if you display a page at 100% then it should appear approximately the same size on the screen as it was on paper, provided that:
  1. You have supplied correct DPI information to the DjVu encoder 
  2. The physical display resolution is correct. Typically, the display resolution is assumed to be 100 DPI.
Besides numerical zoom, four more zoom types are recognized:
 
Zoom
Description
Fit Width Scales the image to fit the width of the window.

Note: The default behavior is to select one of the fast zoom factors. As a result, the page will not fit the window's width precisely. Deselect "Favor fast magnifications for "Fit" resolutions" in the Preferences to disable this behavior.
Fit Page Scales the image to fit the window.

Note: The default behavior is to select one of the fast zoom factors. As a result, the page will not fit the window precisely. Deselect "Favor fast magnifications for "Fit" resolutions" in the Preferences to disable this behavior.
One-to-One The image is scaled to display in pixel-to-pixel mode. In this mode, every pixel of the original image corresponds to one pixel on the screen. This is different from 100% zoom where the image is scaled so that its physical dimensions on the screen are about the same as the dimensions of the original.
Stretch The image is stretched to fit the window precisely. The original proportions (aspect ratio) are ignored.

In order to change the zoom factor, you can select the Zoom item from the pop-up menu. If the toolbar at the bottom of the window is enabled, you can select the Zoom directly there. Type the zoom factor you want and hit Enter. This is the fastest known way to set any custom zoom from 5% to 999%. You can select One-to-One, Fit Width, Fit Page or Stretch zoom by clicking on the arrow on the right side of the toolbar.

There are also keyboard shortcuts available that directly set the zoom factor. 

Navigation

If you view a multipage DjVu document you will need a way to navigate through it page by page. There are three ways to navigate DjVu document:

Navigation using keyboard shortcuts

Keyboard shortcuts are the most useful way to look through a document page by page. The following hot keys are enabled:
 
Key
Action
Page Down, Page Up Brings you to the end or beginning of the current page. If you are already at the beginning or end of the current page, these keys will move to the next or previous page.
Space Brings you to the next page. Unlike the Page Down key, it will not go to the bottom of the current page first. It will move to the next page immediately.
Backspace Move to the previous page. 
Home Move to the beginning of the document.
End Move to the end of the document.

The above table only contains the keyboard shortcuts for navigation.  

Navigation using the popup toolbar

You can also navigate through a multipage DjVu document using the Pop-up Toolbar.

There are six buttons from the toolbar allowing you to navigate the previous page, next page, plus/minus 10 pages, the beginning and end of the document. In addition, you can select the page you want to see from the tool bar directly. These multipage navigation items will not be visible on the toolbar if the plug-in is displaying a single page document. 

Please see the Pop-up Toolbar section in the Deja Vu help for more details.

Navigation using the popup menu

Using the pop-up menu, you can choose an item to Navigate. The following choices are available: Next Page, Previous Page, +10 Pages, -10 Pages, First Page, Last Page and Goto Page. When you select Goto Page, you will get a Goto Page dialog box where allowing you to specify what page you want to view.

Many of the documents have been set up to automatically enlarge to fit your screen. On these documents you will find a hand with an arrow on the palm. Click anywhere on the page, it will automatically fill the screen. Continue to click on the icon to move through the document. You will not need to use the scroll bar or forward buttons. 

Or you can Click on the magnifying glass button with the plus sign (+) that appears at the top of the screen. Then move your mouse back onto the document and click to enlarge the text. Move the scroll bar at the side and bottom of the page to view other parts of the page. 

To move to the next page, click on the right arrow above the document or move the scroll bar down the screen until the next page appears. 

Since we typically scan from photocopies, if the quality of the photocopy is poor (missing text, added marks, etc.), then the quality of the electronic version is too. Of course, this is also true for students if they make photocopies from badly produced printed material on traditional reserve. 

Also try clicking on HELP above the document. It gives information on the other Acrobat Reader tools.

  • How can I copy/print electronic reserve materials?

Saving

The options available for saving a document are: 
  1. Saving the whole document 
  2. Saving a single page
The Save icon on the popup toolbar saves the whole document.

Saving the whole document

This option is used to save your document into a single file or multiple files on your system. 

This capability is useful if you already have several DjVu documents in one of the obsolete formats.Since the plug-in understands any of the four formats (two obsolete and two current) and can save documents in any of the current formats, it is a convenient tool to do the conversion. 

In order to save a multipage document, choose the menu item Save Document As from the popup menu. The document format selection dialog will appear. Choose the INDIRECT format if you want every page to be saved to a separate file (ideal for Web browsing). Choose the BUNDLED format if you want everything to go into a single file (a good format for archiving or sending via e-mail).

In the next window, enter the document filename. For BUNDLED documents, this will be the name of the bundle file. For INDIRECT documents, this will be the name of the top-level file containing pointers to page files. The page files will be created in the same directory as the top-level file. Their names are built-in the document.

Saving a single page

Besides saving the whole document, you can also extract and save just one (current) page. To do this, choose the menu item Save Page As from the popup menu. 

Printing

When you select the Print option from the DjVu pop-up menu, a Print dialog box is displayed with the following options:

Printer options

These options enable the selection of a printer from a list of known printers. Printing to a file is also possible by selecting the Print to file check box in the Print dialog box. A Properties submenu allows further specification of the paper size, print orientation, page layout, printing resolution, image scaling, mirror image, negative printing, and double-sided printing.

Print range options

All Pages - Prints all pages of a single or a multi-page DjVu document.

Pages - Enables printing of a specified range of pages from a multi-page document.

Selection - If this check box is selected, the DjVu plug-in prints only the region of the DjVu page that is being displayed in the plug-in window. This option enables you to print a selected region of the page. This is useful for printing large images.

Regular - If this radio button is checked, the plug-in prints at document resolution.

Reduce to Fit - This radio button enables the DjVu plug-In to set the optimum resolution so that the image fits completely onto the printed page.

Current Zoom - If this radio button is checked, the plug-in prints the DjVu image at the current zoom factor, which is set to view the image on screen.

Copies

Sets the number of copies of each page printed. The default number of copies to print for each page is one.

The effects of the Display Mode setting on printing

Black & White - Prints the foreground layer in black and white, sending the information to the printer using the highest resolution available in memory. This ensures maximum readability.

Color - The resolution and the quality of color printing is controlled by the various settings in the Preferences dialog box.

NOTE: The DjVu plug-In does NOT use the Print command that is found on the main browser menu bar to print DjVu images. Instead, to print a loaded DjVu image, select the Print option from the DjVu popup Menu, or click on the print icon on the DjVu popup toolbar.

Copying: Consider downloading the file to a disk for later use. 

On your course selection page, highlight the file name (should appear as colored hypertext). Click your right mouse button; a drop-down menu should appear. 

Drag your mouse pointer down to "Save link as..." and click. 

A dialog box will appear asking you to specify a file name, file type and location. Specify the location and name ([A:]3 1/2 Floppy or your [C:]C drive); name the file; then in the "Save as type" box leave as All files (*.*) or change the option to "Source". And Save. 

Printing: Because many of the documents have been formatted to fit your screen (icon of hand with an arrow on the palm), printing from this size is difficult. You have two options, under File, Print, there is an option "Shrink to Fit", click this box and print one page to be sure text is readable. OR 
Return to the original size to print by using the magnifying glass button with the minus sign (-). Print one or two pages to test the printing function. And follow the guidelines below. 

Factors to consider which will effect the downloading and printing time: The size of the file. 

The type of network connection with which you are working 

  • A direct ethernet connection will deliver material much more quickly than will a dialup connection. 
The speed of the computer on which you are working. 
  • A computer which will comfortably run Netscape should be sufficient for downloading Electronic Course Reserve DjVu files.
The type and memory of the printer you are using. 
  • DeskJets and DeskWriters are extremely slow to print scanned files. Try to use a laser printer for these files.
Before you print: 
  • You might choose to print only desired pages rather than a complete document. 
  • Who do I contact with questions?
If you have questions about the readings, contact the professor or instructor for the course. 
If you have problems accessing the page, viewing or printing, contact ereserves@princeton.edu.