Textbooks and the Library: What Can Students Expect?

Textbook Costs Can Be Overwhelming

Tuition has risen over the years, but it's not the costs of enrollment, but the cost of textbooks that's a bigger and more serious challenge for LBCC students. After admission to their classes students go shopping for their books, and required texts can easily cost them $300, $500, or more for a semester. For some, this sticker shock can be a “deal breaker,” the end of their college aspirations.


The Library Wants to Help

The library can’t afford to buy copies of every textbook assigned each semester at LBCC, and keeping pace with the new text adoptions and changing editions of existing textbooks isn’t practical. The library’s book collection is intended to supplement and enhance the information contained in texts and taught in class.

What the library can do, though, is provide house and manage reserve copies of textbooks that instructors have supplied. Students can borrow these books on short-term loan (usually 2 hours) to permit access to as many as possible. They can study and make photocopies from them in the library, but texts are for in-library use only and students need their current college ID to use them.

Calling all LBCC Faculty!

The library’s reserve service depends upon faculty to supply copies of their textbooks and to make them available for reserve checkout. Often this is a student’s only avenue for completing the reading assignments for his/her course. Faculty owned reserve textbooks can be put on reserve by completing a form found at http://lib.lbcc.edu/forms/reserveform.cfm

For further information contact: Nenita Buenaventura at nbuenaventura@lbcc.edu.

Library Update #56