You Spoke: Textbooks

This is the fourth in a series of posts to respond to findings from the LibQual 2009 survey.

Several students wrote comments in the LibQual survey asking for the library to have copies of the textbooks that they use in their classes.

The library has not gotten copies of textbooks because the role of the library is to buy additional resources that students, faculty, and staff need to support their research. So, rather than using all of our money to buy copies of textbooks, we use that money to buy online journals, databases, print books, and ebooks that can be used when writing papers, giving presentations, and conducting other projects. Not buying textbooks is common practice among academic libraries.

Of course, many professors do put copies of their textbooks on reserve in the library, and we are happy to assist them in doing that. Our homepage lets students check to see if their textbook is on reserve and lets faculty put items on reserve.