This article is more than 5 years old.

The Z Smith Reynolds Library is continuing its textbook pilot program into a second year. The pilot began in the fall of 2012, as a result of a strategic initiative to help address the of the financial burden that textbook purchases place on students. Our textbook pilot, through an arrangement with the bookstore, enables us to purchase one book for every class that is taught to 30 or more students at the undergraduate level. The pilot started slowly in the fall of 2012 with only a small percentage of the purchased material having circulated in the first 3 months. The spring semester saw a significant uptick in the usage of the collection. As a result, we’ve decided to see if this trend continues, and will continue the pilot into its second year.

The Textbook Collection is kept behind the Circulation Desk and interested students can request them for checkout. New Fall 2013 texts have been added and are available now.

Similar to reserves materials, the textbooks circulate only in the building, and because of the numbers of students who need access, they only circulate for 2 hours at a time. While we have collected a large number of books offered to undergraduates, the collection does not contain every book used in an undergraduate course. It does contain many of the more expensive and interestingly, heavier texts! We hope the textbooks will assist students who otherwise might not have easy access to their assigned reading material. They also are available for those students who might decide not to lug their heavy textbook across campus, and happen to be studying in the library.

If you think there is a textbook that warrants being in the collection that we have overlooked, please contact Mary Beth Lock. We will try to obtain it.