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Textbook Collections: Required Of Our Students, Unwelcome In Our Academic Library?, Leanne Olson
Textbook Collections: Required Of Our Students, Unwelcome In Our Academic Library?, Leanne Olson
Leanne Olson
What happens when library policies and philosophies of the past run counter to user desires of the present?
At Western University (Ontario, Canada) we have an official collections policy to avoid collecting textbooks, as they fall outside of the carefully librarian-driven, research-heavy philosophies that drive our acquisitions process. However, in every survey to students and faculty, we find requests for textbooks on reserve and praise for the books we already have.
In response, I conducted a statistical analysis of textbooks and our collections: we already provided access to nearly 40% of required course texts (despite our policies), and these were …