Q. Can I use Harvard Business Review articles and cases for course reserves?

Yes, you can use articles from Harvard Business Review (HBR) that we own in print in your course reserves. We have HBR in print in the library through 2017, and these articles can be scanned for electronic reserves. However, this does not include HBR Cases. Cases are separate from the journal and must be purchased separately. The library does not subscribe to an HBR Case database. 

To set up HBR articles in course reserves, please contact Library Course Reserves at course.reserves@wwu.edu or submit a course reserves request form.

Some HBR Cases are indexed in Business Source Complete from 1942 to 2022 if you would like to search for cases related to a specific topic. Because HBR Cases are often purchased as course-specific materials, they are rarely available through Interlibrary Loan.

Articles from the Harvard Business Review are available in EBSCO's Business Source Complete. HBR Publishing has a strict license agreement on electronic copies available in the Business Source Complete and does not allow anyone to link to their articles in Business Source Complete. HBR claims that their materials in Business Source Complete are not intended to be used for assigned course materials--this restriction includes linking to HBR materials from Canvas, websites, and course syllabi. In addition to these restrictions, HBR has developed an HBR 500 list. This is a list of the most popular 500 articles from HBR and has requested that these be listed as "read-only" in Business Source Complete. The articles are available to read online but they can't be download or linked to. 

Because of these issues, many HBR articles won't be linked to directly from OneSearch. You will need to go directly to Business Source Complete to access these articles.  

The license agreement Harvard Business Publishing has with EBSCO supersedes Fair Use, however Fair Use does apply to the print copy which is why these articles can be used for course reserves. However, Western Libraries only has access to HBR in print from 1923-2017.

For more Information on HBR's restrictions:

Please see the statement from the American Library Association's (ALA) Business Reference and User Association's (BRASS) statement on the HBR 500 and the use restrictions. 

HBR 500: the list of articles restricted to read-only in Business Source Complete.

If you have any questions, please contact Elizabeth Stephan at elizabeth.stephan@wwu.edu or 360-650-2061.