Services for Faculty

While the library is eager to work with faculty to support textbook affordability and make all necessary readings available to your students, our priority on serving the research needs of all students and the nature of the textbook market place certain limits on the extent to which we can provide textbooks. Please reach out to us with any questions or to discuss the details of your particular class(es).

NOTA BENE: Please be aware as you plan your classes that the library cannot provide multiple copies of the same book or article for your students via interlibrary loan. If multiple students in your class will need to be reading the same text at the same time, please adopt it as a required textbook, place it on Reserve, share it on Blackboard (if you can do so while complying with copyright), or contact us before the semester begins to discuss alternatives for making it available to your students. The library is not usually able to accomodate last-minute demand for specific publications. 

The library does not normally acquire copies of books that are adopted as required textbooks for JBU classes. Exceptions may be made in the following circumstances:

• TUG Core Curriculum: For non-elective core curriculum classes, the library routinely acquires one print or electronic copy of each required textbook to be made available on Reserve. The library does not provide access to electronic supplemental materials, nor does it guarantee that it will provide the exact same edition selected by the faculty member. 
• OLUG Classes:  If a book selected as a texbook for an online undergraduate class is available from the publisher under an electronic license that can support multiple simultaneous users, the library may acquire it.
• Highly Relevant Titles:  If a book is deemed by the librarians to be relevant to the research needs of students in classes beyond the one for which it is assigned as a textbook, a copy may be acquired for the library collection notwithstanding its textbook status. This judgment call is made on a case-by-case basis, and it is most likely to apply to academic or trade books that are not marketed exclusively as textbooks. To recommend a book for acquisition, please fill out the online book recommendation form.

When the library does acquire books that are used as required textbooks, it will seek unlimited user ebooks if available. Physical copies of textbooks will be kept on Reserve for in-library use in order to ensure equitable access.

If a textbook does not qualify for library acquisition, but you have a personal/desk copy that you would like to make available to students, we can place your copy on Reserve for them. See the Reserve collection policies for further details.

Please send us copies any bibliographies or recommended resource lists that you share with students so that we can be prepared for their requests. If you give assignments where all students in a section are writing about the same topic at the same time, we strongly encourage you to communicate with us about placing relevant resources on Reserve to make sure all students have access to appropriate resources. If you give assignments where each student selects a different book to review/present, providing us with a copy of your book list will help us to make sure that there are at least some options available to students at no additional cost to them.  

If you are interested in using library materials and/or open educational resources (OER) to minimize the cost of textbooks even for students who opt out of the Slingshot Premium program, the best time to explore your options is before you have selected the required readings for your class. eBook licensing options vary widely by publisher, and many (but not all) textbook publishers decline to make their textbooks available at all to the library market in ebook format, so once you have committed to a specific text, options for making it more affordable for students may be limited.

Upon request, we can explore whether particular books are available as library ebooks, and/or provide recommendations of library resources or OER texts that may meet the needs of you class. Contact your liaison librarian to explore options.

Adopt all required textbooks on the Slingshot Pro dashboard, even if they are available from the library. You can add a note in Slingshot about library availability (e.g., "This book is available from the library as an ebook" or "This book will be available in the library on Reserve") so that price-sensitive students checking the bookstore website will be aware that they have the option of accessing the book through the library. Please also tell us if you have done this so we can be prepared if students ask about it.

To direct students to library eBooks, we recommend requesting a Course Guide page that will provide direct links to all necessary materials and sharing that page with your students through Blackboard. Contact your liaison librarian to ask for a page for your class. To share a link to an ebook or article with students via Blackboard or email, make sure you use a Permalink rather than just copying and pasting the contents of your internet browser's navigation bar. 

See Reserves policy for details about placing items on Reserve in the library.

JBU Library Interlibrary Loan does not fill requests for books that we know to have been adopted as required textbooks for JBU classes or for books that are marketed primarily as textbooks, regardless of whether they have been adopted for a JBU class. We recognize that this can be frustrating for price-sensitive patrons, but there are a variety of practical considerations that make this policy necessary. Faculty and students are advised to budget accordingly.