Here's our policy:
The acquisition of textbooks is discouraged. Exceptions are made for those subjects for which textbooks provide the best coverage of a subject, or when the work itself is of a seminal, historical, or other determined value. The Library does not purchase textbooks required for courses. Supplemental textbooks may be acquired as noted in the exceptions above at the specific request of a classroom faculty member.
We also have a policy on ILL for textbooks:
Textbooks and other required class readings are not requested for students via ILLiad/ILL. This service is for research. Students can attempt to borrow these items via GIL Express (the University System of Georgia's universal borrowing service).
Reasons include...
1. other library will lend for only 3-4 weeks, not half or whole semester.
2. if one person in a class can do it, everyone should be able to and that's against national ILL policy because if we are requesting a title more than once, then our library should be purchasing it
Below is a related note from another library that might be of interest.
Hope this helps,
Jonathan
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 2009 11:56:53 -0400
From: "Susan Morris" <smorris_at_uga.edu>
Subject: Re: [ILL-L] borrowing books for college classes
To: "Interlibrary Loan Listserv" <ill-l_at_webjunction.org>
Message-ID: <00f101ca2be5$fdc08c00$bd36c080_at_libs.uga.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Hi Lisa,
We, like many other academic ILL departments, are plagued at the beginning of every semester by requests for textbooks. We sympathize with students concerning the rising costs of textbooks and we truly are not just trying to be mean or keep anybody from getting their degree, but we, and a good number of other ILL departments, specifically list in our local policies page for our own users why ILL is not a substitute for students' obtaining textbooks). To get you started, among the various reasons:
1)Most libraries do not include textbooks as part of their collection development policies. Therefore it can be extremely difficult to locate a library that owns any edition of the needed title (much less the exact edition being used in any given semester). Even finally locating and borrowing the wrong edition could take well into the term, if we are lucky.
2) Most lending units have a relatively short loan period--even if renewals are granted. Most do not have a "whole semester" or "whole year" loan period (which is what these users often expect. We had someone hold onto a borrowed book unbeknownst to us as being used in a class till it was so overdue we were rightly billed from the lending institution for the book--which was considerably higher than the price of the textbook from a bookstore-- factoring in fines, replacement processing fees etc.)
3) A borrowing library may be charged a loan fee (if they can locate a lender). At our institution, we are undergoing budget cuts and furloughs--when we are looking at cutting out databases and journal subscriptions--which are obtained for the good of all, we cannot justify spending hundreds or thousands of dollars in loan fees so that some students won't have to pay any money for their textbooks.
The three above reasons don't stop people from asking--but we have to stand firm. Also, in our state the HOPE scholarship, available to students who maintain a 3.0 gpa has a $150 book allowance--again, I know that it only goes so far covering the price of textbooks--but it's better than nothing.
One other observation, based on an experience we had last spring: We cannot ask another library to copy chapter one this week, chapter two in a couple of weeks, chapter three a week or so later etc. etc.(even though we provide free copies to our users, there is a little thing called COPYRIGHT that plays into this scheme)....
Hope this helps,
Susan Morris
ILL/GUA
********************************
Jonathan H. Harwell
Collection Development & Assessment Librarian
Zach S. Henderson Library
Georgia Southern University
PO Box 8074
Statesboro, GA 30460-8074
(912) 478-5114
fax (912) 478-0289
jharwell_at_georgiasouthern.edu
http://mesoj.edublogs.org ( http://mesoj.edublogs.org/ )
Subject Specialist for Music, Sociology, & Anthropology
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Received on Thu Nov 12 2009 - 15:41:42 EST