How are academic libraries addressing the student textbook crisis?

Has anyone developed a successful model for making student textbooks available in the library, either on reserve or via e-book access?

Lisa Wallis

• academic-libraries
• collection-management
• reserves

Comments

• jonsca: Could you elaborate a bit more on the nature of the crisis for those not steeped in the academic world? As an outsider, all I know is that the prices are nearing \$200. Is that what you are referring to, or is there a shortage?
• Ashley Nunn: Where is this crisis taking place? Globally? Just the US? Canada? Somewhere else entirely? Some more detail would really help this question out, otherwise it is likely to be closed, as in the current state it is hard to tell what sort of answer to give, as this is a very broad question that could have many different answers depending on context.
• dsalo: K-12 or college/university?

Answer by David Lewis

If you want to know about the crisis a good source of information is the Make Textbooks Affordable project at: http://www.studentpirgs.org/campaigns/sp/make-textbooks-affordable

One interesting approach is that of Indiana University where the university contracts with publishers for digital textbooks with a print option, all students in a class pay a course fee, and cost are well below the list price. For information see: http://etexts.iu.edu

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Answer by wdenton

At my university library we don't have an answer. Textbooks usually go on reserve, but we don't always buy them. They're expensive, they get replaced with a new edition in a couple of years ... and they get stolen. The best advice we can give students is to buy it at the bookstore, where there are some cost-saving measures in place, such as some kind of bonus-money-back program, and a buy-back plan, that will help reduce the cost a bit.

There's certainly no way we can provide consistent reliable access to all of their textbooks to all the students.

Comments

Answer by Melissa

This library has a policy of not purchasing textbooks. (We choose to spend our limited library budget on materials not available in the bookstore.)

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Answer by Julie Obst

I work at two academic libraries, full-time at a large community college library and part-time at a small private university library. Our policy at the large library is to put textbooks on reserve at instructor request, but we do not purchase textbooks whatsoever and consider them consumables. The reserve textbooks are used heavily.

At the small private library, there is a robust system in place for textbooks each semester. At the beginning of the term, a librarian requests a textbook list from the book store and checks with instructors as to whether or not they would like to donate a textbook to the library for the semester. The textbook does not become part of our collection, and is housed in its own section along with a binder for students to use to find their book. The binder contains course name and number, instructor name, book title, and edition. At the beginning of each term, students depend on library staff to help them find these books and hear about the books through word of mouth. We have about 150 books on this unofficial reserve system and haven't lost a book yet, though a few chapters from a unbound edition did go missing. The bookstore has also contributed editions.

The success of this project has been thanks to willing faculty and great communication.

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