The Textbook Loan Library, a service that allows students to rent texts for a quarter at no cost, will soon switch locations to the Student Activities Center and will debut a website to streamline the book-borrowing process.
The library, developed by the Financial Support Commission and Academic Affairs Commission, will be ready to better serve Bruins when improvements are completed this winter quarter, said Suza Khy, Undergraduate Students Association Council Academic Affairs commissioner.
“Lately, with the fee increases, we’ve seen lots of students suffer from an inability to pay for books,” Khy said. “If you don’t have resources, you can’t succeed academically.”
The loan library is a collection of books that previously belonged to students who won the USAC Financial Support Commission’s quarterly textbook scholarship drawing.
Bruins who receive the $250 scholarship are required to return the books they purchase at the end of the quarter. These books are added to the Textbook Loan Library and become available to other students for free, as long as they have a valid BruinCard.
Since the loan library’s launch last year, these texts had been housed in the Financial Supports Office in Kerckhoff Hall, along with a smattering of books from private donors.
But recent improvement attempts will move the library to the more central and spacious Student Activities Center at the start of winter quarter, after funding for shelves and other necessities is approved by USAC, Khy said.
Students could not borrow books this quarter because of the development of a library website, which will replace the handwritten list of available textbook titles that hung last year in the Financial Supports Office.
Beginning in winter quarter, the online database will allow students to browse books and schedule times to pick the books up from a room in the Student Activities Center, said Rustom Birdie, USAC Financial Support commissioner.
Because not many students are aware that the library exists, Birdie said he believes that the site coupled with increased advertising efforts will draw more Bruins to the program.
“I had no idea (the library) was here,” second-year communication studies student Cristina Pruett said. “I don’t think I would have used it in the past since there wasn’t a website. But having a pool of books that I can see online makes the process so easy.”
According to Birdie, the library’s current collection of about 700 texts grows each quarter as more students win the textbook scholarship and return their resources to the library.
Because the scholarship winners hail from a randomly selected variety of departments, available books range from music history texts to chemistry course readers.
Even with its variety and accessibility, Birdie said there is a significant glitch in the library’s pool of resources.
“The problem we face is that books become obsolete very fast,” Birdie said. “Some professors use a different textbook every quarter, or at least a different edition of the same book. So (the library has) all these books, but students can’t use them because they’re earlier editions than they need. It’s frustrating.”
To combat this, Birdie plans to meet with the Academic Senate and propose the installment of a faculty pledge.
The pledge would compel professors to use the same edition of the same textbook for a certain number of quarters, ensuring that more students would be able to take advantage of the loan library and other initiatives, such as the Associated Students UCLA Bookstore’s Textbook Buyback program.