Affordable + Reusable Textbooks
A partnership between VT students, faculty, and your libraries
Reuse Textbooks To Alleviate Students' Financial Burden
On average, college students in Virginia spend more than $500 per person per year on required textbooks. Virginia Tech students alone spend more than your library's annual collections budget on textbooks. The financial burden weighs on every student, and disproportionately affects those in dire need. High textbook cost has caused many students to attend classes without required textbooks, take fewer courses, not register for a specific course, drop or withdraw from a course, earn a poor grade, or fail a course.
How can we help?
Check out the slides Professor Zhiwu Xie presented at the March 29, 2022 Virginia Tech Undergraduate Student Senate meeting. Also check out the pilot we ran at the Department of English during the 2022 Spring semester.
Faculty
Invite us to start a conversation!
If you are teaching in the next semester, at least a month before the new semester starts, please get in touch* with us to explore ways to leverage library resources to lower your students' textbook costs and get acknowledged for your efforts.
Students
Encourage your professors to participate in this program, and/or share ideas on how the library and your professors can help you.
If you take a participating course, through a textbook lottery, you will have the opportunity to check out from the library required textbooks for a full semester.
If you win the lottery, please also consider sharing the checked out textbooks with your classmates in need.
Library
Offer cost reduction suggestions, especially through reuse and removing reuse barriers.
Coordinate to put on the library's course reserve at least one copy of the required text for all participating courses.
Run a textbook lottery to provide additional textbooks to students in need.
Everyone Can Help
Share your ideas!