In the current circumstances, students will be unable to borrow physical textbooks from IU Libraries -- a challenge especially for those who are unable to afford the expense. Textbook publishers generally don't sell e-books to libraries, adding to the challenge; however, the Libraries can help you find electronic equivalents and/or appropriate alternate options:

• Consider textbooks available through IU collections on HathiTrust.
• Consider open textbooks and resources (freely available, openly licensed materials) for use in your course. Use the search tools available on our guide, IU Libraries guide on Open Educational Resources, to find existing open textbooks or create and publish your own open resources for your course. You can ask a librarian to help you locate relevant open content.
• Consider non-academic practitioner e-books intended for professional readers. Ask a librarian to recommend and purchase an e-book.
• Know that not all e-resources are available to purchase for online, educational or classroom use.

Using these options will help ensure timely and equitable access to reserve materials for your classes.

If you find an e-book in the Library catalog that you'd like to use for your class, please contact your librarian to make sure we have enough digital 'copies.' Some e-books are limited to a small number of concurrent users, and that can mean that only some of your students will be able to access the book at any given time. We can usually upgrade availability, but that make take a few days, so let us know as soon as you are considering including an e-book as part of the required readings for your course.