Textbook costs have been soaring for decades, rising far faster than the rate of inflation or even tuition. They are sometimes so expensive that students do not purchase required textbooks, them. Over the last couple years, the library has been working with faculty to incorporate more open educational resources (OER) into course curriculum, but sometimes existing OERs don’t provide what is needed for a course. Now, the library is teaming up with SGA to make sure students have access to required course materials essential for academic success.
The Textbook Reserve Program aims to provide copies of high-use textbooks for as many courses and sections as possible. For the spring semester, we’ve added over 50 print and/or electronic textbooks to the collection and found 44 titles already available through the library.
Print copies of books are available as 3-hour checkouts from the library service desk and ebooks are available to access directly from the library’s website or from your course’s Blackboard page. Students, if you haven’t heard from your professor about your textbook being on reserve, you can check the library’s Course Reserves by using the Search Everything tool.
We hope this is just the beginning. The library is committed to engaging faculty on the rewards of using OER’s while also expanding the Textbook Reserve collection as we work to ensure SU students have access to the materials they need to succeed, no matter the cost.
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