Textbooks @ Touro Libraries: Home

Touro Libraries Course Materials Statement

The Touro Libraries encourage faculty to identify low or no-cost online textbooks and resources so that students can access course materials remotely if necessary and without significant financial burden.

Before the pandemic, Touro students faced hurdles in accessing course texts, and we know that such access is critical to student success. As we reopen, it will likely be necessary to quarantine print books for several days between uses, thus making physical course reserves a difficult option for the foreseeable future.

While eTextbooks have been considered, commercial textbook publishers do not consistently offer electronic purchasing options for libraries, so many textbooks are simply unavailable to any library, regardless of budget, in formats other than print.

This means that, in courses with these required materials, students who would otherwise rely on library course reserves may not have alternative access to the text.

The good news is that there are low and no-cost textbook alternatives that can be implemented easily:

• Open Educational Resources: Freely available educational materials, which are openly licensed and can be re-used and modified by instructors
• Library eBooks: Adopting an existing eBook from the Libraries’ eBook collection or requesting that we purchase one
• Online reserve packs: May be created with library resources, open access materials, links, and excerpts or scanned copies (subject to copyright limitations) and can be housed on the Libraries website or in a Canvas course

Library staff are available to assist faculty in locating alternatives to required textbooks, including eBooks in our collection and OER:

• Kirk Snyder, Open Educational Resources Librarian (OER):kirk.snyder3@touro.edu
• Sara Tabaei, Library Information Literacy Director: sara.tabaei@touro.edu

Adapted from the Course Materials Statement by the Leonard Lief Library at Lehman College