Students who are off-campus can view and print electronic reserve articles through the TOPCAT Library Catalog. If your instructor has placed materials on electronic reserve for your course, follow these steps to access them:
From your Web browser (Netscape preferred – see Things to be aware of below), go to the TOPCAT Catalog.
Under Course Reserves, choose either by Course Name or by Instructor and type in appropriate information -- if searching by course name, begin with CUW (e.g. CUW ed 102); if searching by instructor, type last name first (e.g. Smith, Jane).
When the articles for your course are listed on the screen, click on the name of the item you wish to view/print (will say ELECTRONIC COPY AVAILABLE to the right of the title for electronic reserves).
When you’ve selected an article, you will be asked to type your name (first name then last name) and your barcode number (barcode number from your CUW ID card) then click the SUBMIT button.
NOTE: TO VIEW ELECTRONIC RESERVES, YOU WILL NEED TO HAVE ADOBE ACROBAT READER INSTALLED ON YOUR COMPUTER.
The first page of the document will appear with some navigation buttons above it. Use these buttons to move through the document and to print or save to a disk (the save and print buttons are the furthest to the right).
Things to be aware of:
Students must have a computer capable of connecting to TOPCAT.
To view articles, students must have a Web browser version 3.0 or higher and have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on their computer.Internet Explorer does not support high-resolution printing so Netscape is the preferred browser for printing at this time.
Downloading or printing articles is very time intensive (one student reported it taking upward of 10 minutes a page).
Students will need a valid CUW ID and library barcode before they will be able to access the articles.
If students are unable to print or view an article, they should contact the instructor to arrange to receive a copy. Due to copyright restrictions, the library is unable to supply photocopies.
