Affordable Learning Solutions (AL$)

The University Library would love to work with you to see how we can improve our collections while enhancing student success! We may be able to purchase a licensed print or ebook for use in your course if it meets the following requirements*:

• The book is required reading (not supplemental) in a for-credit class
• The book must be assigned in full, or at least 50%
• The library providing access to this book must reduce total course materials cost for students by at least 30% 
• If ebook, an appropriate e-license is available (see below for information about publisher limitations on ebook availability)

Faculty and staff may request a purchase, and we can let you know if we are able to purchase it. 

*AL$ course materials purchase criteria are subject to change. AL$ is a grant-funded program and thus future availability of funds is not guaranteed. Depending on funding available, price caps on licensing costs may be implemented.

The library’s ability to obtain and provide online access to a given text depends on a number of factors:

• Availability of AL$ grant funds
• Whether the text meets AL$ grant requirements as described above
• Whether the publisher offers an ebook license for sale to libraries (approximately 85% of existing course textbooks are simply unavailable to libraries in any other format than print)
• Whether the publisher sets a concurrent user limit of 1-user or 3-user (no unlimited user option), and whether that limited access has a prohibitive price tag (ebook costs for a single user only can often be ten times the cost of the same paper book)

What if an instructor wishes to assign a text that the Library already owns? 

• If an instructor wishes to assign a text the library already owns but it is 1-user or 3-user only, they can contact us using the online form and request that we upgrade to unlimited user access, if available and affordable
• The library recommends that instructors verify the number of concurrent users prior to assigning a library-owned or subscribed text, and inform students accordingly (I know this is not always possible – anecdotally, I know of a few times where a faculty member was handed a course/syllabus designed by someone else and did not have agency to change the text)
• We further recommend that faculty double-check the links on their syllabi/in Blackboard in preparation for each new semester, as URLs sometimes change, and publishers sometimes pull down titles from subscription packages
• Where possible, the library notifies instructors in advance when we learn an assigned text (or film) will no longer be available. We’re often challenged to identify which instructor(s) to notify -- we can clearly see when a text (or film) is assigned for a course because of its high usage statistics, but unless it is listed with the bookstore, or until a student/faculty contacts us when access goes down, we have no way of knowing which courses are affected
• By and large, the content in our subscription packages is stable. It’s unfortunate when an assigned text is pulled down from a subscription package, and we make every effort to purchase permanent access to the text if a perpetual license is offered for sale