No Textbooks Allowed! (Unless You’re a Graduate Student!): Louisiana State University Pilots an ILL Textbook Service

Abstract

Alongside increasing tuition and fees, textbook costs remain an expensive hurdle for students seeking a college education; however, university libraries are implementing strategies to ease this financial burden. Initiatives like income-based textbook programs, library textbook collections, and partnerships with faculty to encourage the use of free e-textbooks are just a few ways libraries are easing the financial strain. It is in this spirit that LSU’s interlibrary loan department supplemented such initiatives by revising its decades old no-textbook policy. In the spring of 2017, a pilot was launched, and for the first time, graduate students were able to make requests to interlibrary loan for textbooks. Prior to launch, some concerns were expressed about the ramifications of allowing such a service. This case study will respond directly to those concerns using data collected from ILLiad over the course of the pilot as well as discuss the strategy used to carefully implement the service.

Keywords:

• Textbooks
• interlibrary loan
• policy revision
• ILLiad
• open educational resources