E-Reserves February 18, 2002
Posted by Library Answer Person in : Uncategorized , add a commentOne of the points of using e-reserves is to be able to read a document online and not have to waste paper by printing it. However, this is virtually impossible because whoever scans in the material never rotates it 90 degrees, leaving it currently appearing vertically on the computer screen. Since you cannot rotate a pdf file on most versions of adobe acrobat reader, it would make life much easier (and save the university a lot of money in paper/toner) if the simple task of rotation was done.
ANSWER PERSON RESPONDS: Answer Person agrees that it would be nice to have all the pages display straight up, but that would more than double the scanning process for those smaller paged articles that are scanned two across. With tens of thousands of pages in e-Reserves that would simply be unreasonable.
It would also double the amount of paper used in printing them-and let’s be honest about this: many people are printing out the articles. (Especially here at Duke, where, unlike UNC-CH and NCSU, printing is free.)
Answer Person tried the two versions of Adobe on AP’s machine; 4.0 does not rotate, 5.0 does. So isn’t it curious that OIT’s download version is 4.0! We are getting OIT to update their version to 5.0 (or later0, and making sure that all the library’s public machines are also up-to-date.
ereserves February 5, 2002
Posted by Library Answer Person in : Uncategorized , add a commentThis isn’t a suggestion so much as a complaint: I print many many ereserves every semester as an Art History major. In four years I have never had a problem with the ereserves system. However, this semester, whoever is scanning in the pages scans in the odd pages first and then the even pages. I realize it is probably a boring task; however, I would appreciate not having to sort every single 40+ page ereserve I print. The point in the past has seemed to me to be that the articles print out and there you have what you need; I don’t understand why now every ereserve I print has to be reassembled and shuffled through so the entire process takes almost as long as if I were photocopying the articles myself.
ANSWER PERSON RESPONDS: Answer Person checked with the people in Reserves, and the situation you describe does occur, rarely, when the photocopy being scanned has been submitted as a two-sided document. With tens of thousands of pages to scan into Reserves it is much more efficient to run through the pages one way, and then the other. However, this is a rare situation, and we are confused as to why this is happening with “every reserve” you print.
Answer Person suggests that when you do run across one of these situations, let the people at the Reserves Desk (or nearest Public Services desk, if you are not in Perkins) know about the specific documents. They may be able to resolve particular problems when they can be identified. Understanding that “the entire process takes almost as long as if you were photocopying the articles” yourself, bear in mind the fact that Reserves keeps up with the heavy (and often last minute demands) to get things into the system. And unlike photocopying the articles yourself (or printing them at UNC-Chapel Hill), you don’t have to pay for those copies.
