LOCR Instructor Guide

Library Online Course Reserves (LOCR) is a request application for managing your course reserves at UBC. LOCR helps make required items for courses available to you and your students. You can request course reserves by adding the content yourself or sending a list of items for the librarians to add for you.

In either case, the UBC Library staff will ensure your course reserves are copyright compliant and will handle acquisitions of any required licenses.

Access Immediate You can access LOCR through Canvas if you add LOCR to your Canvas course, or you can log in to LOCR outside of Canvas.
Cost Yes Free.
Bandwidth Yes Low demand on internet connections.
Canvas Integration Yes Works in coordination with Canvas.
Privacy Yes Complies with UBC’s privacy requirements.
Similar UBC-Supported Tools N LOCR is the only centrally supported tool for managing your course reserves.

What can I use it for?

You can use LOCR to provide course items to your students in a variety of ways:

  • Adding articles, books, web links, and media resources to your Canvas course
  • Linking directly to course items from inside or outside of Canvas
  • Sharing PDFs of book chapters
  • Setting up access to readings in future terms

A note about LOCR

To assure timely availability of course reserves for your students, kindly submit your request at least a month in advance. It can take up to four weeks for the UBC Library staff to review and process your requests, depending on the type of items and the time of year.

This tool guide was last reviewed in April 2025.

What do I need to use LOCR?

A supported web browser

LOCR runs in your web browser and supports the latest versions of Chrome, Edge, Firefox, or Safari.


A Canvas course (optional but recommended)

You can use LOCR as a standalone site, but we recommend using it with a Canvas course. Adding LOCR to Canvas can be a quicker way for students to access your course reserves.

Tips

  • Regardless of where you access LOCR from, you will only need to request course reserves in one place. You and your students can then access them from either the Canvas course or the standalone LOCR site.

How do I use LOCR?

To use LOCR, you can enable it in your Canvas course and request the items you would like to include in your course reserves at least a month in advance. Once the UBC Library staff approve the items, they will be available to share with your students.

Click any accordion bar below for instructions and tips for using LOCR.

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Set the availability of your course reserves

For course reserves to be available to your students when you expect, make sure your Canvas course has the correct start and end dates. The start and end dates in Canvas are used to set when course reserves in LOCR are available for your students: the start date in LOCR will be two weeks before the course start date in Canvas and the end date will be the same as the course end date in Canvas.

We recommend verifying your course dates in Canvas before you make a request in LOCR, even if you will not enable access to LOCR through your Canvas course.

  1. Log in to your Canvas course and click Settings in the Course Navigation.
  2. Click the Course Details tab.
  3. Scroll until you see "Participation" and confirm that your course participation start and end dates are correct.
  4. If your course participation dates are correct, you do not need to do anything else.
  5. If your course participation dates are incorrect, you can change these dates manually:
    • Next to "Participation", enter the Start and End dates for when students should have access to your course.
    • Click Update Course Details.

Add LOCR to your Canvas course

  1. If your course has multiple sections, these sections ideally should be merged in Canvas before setting up LOCR. Merging ensures enrolment numbers are correct for the UBC Library when obtaining copyright clearances.
  2. Log in to your Canvas course and click Settings in the Course Navigation.
  3. Click the Navigation tab.
  4. Find the "Library Online Course Reserves" menu item, click the three vertical dots (options icon) and select Enable.
  5. Click Save to confirm your changes.
  6. The Library Online Course Reserves menu item will now be available in the Course Navigation for you and your students.

Tips

  • You can add a link to LOCR in a Canvas module as well. Including a module link can be helpful if you want to contextualize a reading within a specific part of your course. Click "Modules" in the Course Navigation. Click the plus icon next to the module you want to add a LOCR link to. Select "External Tool" from the drop-down and choose "Library Online Course Reserves" from the list. Click “Add Item”.

Request course reserves through LOCR

You can request course reserves in LOCR by adding the content yourself (Self Service) or by sending a list of items (Syllabus Service) for librarians to add for you. In either case, the UBC Library staff will ensure your course reserves are copyright compliant and handle acquisitions of any required licenses.

For Self Service, you will use the "Add Reserve Items" tab in LOCR; for Syllabus Service, you will use the "Add Syllabus" tab.

Using Self Service, you can add item requests for library-owned resources to your course reserves using the search form. You can also upload files saved on your computer (e.g., PDFs) or upload links (e.g., YouTube videos) for review. If you have used LOCR for another course, you can use Self Service to import previous requests into a course.

Instructions for these processes are outlined in the "Self Service" tab on the UBC Library's course reserves page.

Using Syllabus Service, you will request all items for your course reserves at once by submitting the full list of items as a PDF or Word document. The document must include the following information:

  • The course name and course code
  • Your name and contact information
  • Full citations for all works (author's name, title, year of publication, edition, pages)
  • The loan period for any physical items to be put in course reserves collection (2 hours, 1 day, 3 days, 7 days, or 14 days)
  • Whether each course item is required or optional for students
  • Requests for any new purchases for the UBC Library collections (only if applicable)

Instructions and options for submitting your document are outlined in the "Syllabus Service" tab on the UBC Library's course reserves page.

Tips

  • To ensure timely availability of course reserves for your students, please submit your requests at least a month before the start of your course. Items are processed on a first-come, first-served basis, and it can take up to four weeks for the UBC Library staff to review and process your requests.
  • If you already have PDFs of any course content you cannot find in LOCR, please email the files to the UBC Library at syllabus.service@ubc.ca. Sending the files to the UBC Library may help the library staff expedite approvals.
  • Once you add items in LOCR, you can edit, delete, and view status information about them. Status information includes the number of student views and the upload/modification history of the items.

Share course reserves with students through LOCR

Your students can access LOCR from your Canvas course through the Course Navigation and/or through a link to LOCR in a module, depending on which access points you added. Students can also access LOCR using the standalone LOCR site.

Once logged in to LOCR, students will see a list of course reserves. They can filter the list by title, author, or tag using the search box. Each item in the list will indicate under the "Read" column if a student has previously accessed it. Clicking any title will allow students to view electronic items directly or see where the physical items are available.

You can provide students with additional access to course reserves using direct links. LOCR assigns a unique PURL (Permanent URL) for each item in your course reserves so it can be shared. The links will require students to log in to LOCR with their UBC CWL (Campus-Wide Login) to ensure only enrolled students can see the items.

Tips

  • We recommend adding LOCR to the Course Navigation of your Canvas course. Adding LOCR to the Course Navigation of your Canvas course can be a quicker way for students to access your course reserves.
  • Only approved items will be visible to students. If an item is still being processed for copyright clearance by the UBC library, it will be visible in LOCR to you but not to your students.

Where can I get more support with LOCR?

Technical support

If you have trouble with LOCR:


Student support

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