Textbooks and Interlibrary Loan

Abstract

Students unhappy with the high cost of course textbooks are turning to the library to help alleviate the financial burden. There is no consensus, though, among academic libraries about how to respond to this demand. While the majority of libraries refuse to fill interlibrary loan requests for required textbooks, students continue to submit them. An evaluation was done to determine how frequently students use interlibrary loan to request textbooks at Wichita State University, the costs of such requests, and whether or not a textbook collection within the library offered a solution to this issue.