If you’re shopping around for classes and don’t want to buy the books yet, prefer to leave your heavy textbooks in your off-campus housing, or just need to read one chapter of that pricy new edition, Course Reserves might be right for you!

Course Reserves are required or recommended textbooks that your professors have asked us to keep on hand for the semester. They check out for two hours. You can use them in the library or take them elsewhere to study, as long as you bring them back within that time.

We group the Reserve books into library locations by department. For example, most Engineering classes’ textbooks reside at the Barker Library, while Global Language and Literature courses’ texts are at Hayden. This means you don’t have to run across campus looking for books in lots of different places—plus, the short loan period lets everyone in the class have a chance to use it.

If you need a Reserve book for longer, or overnight, take a look at our full Course Reserves FAQ for more details on renewals, fine policies, and more.

To find your class’s Reserves, select the Course Reserves option from the search box on the MIT Libraries homepage and enter the course number. You can also search by instructor name or course name keyword. Then write down—or take a picture of—the call number (a mix of letters and numbers after where the item says its location and “Reserve Stacks”). Just hand that to the staff at the library’s front desk and you’ll be good to go.