Dear Students,
Last month, I discussed the Loan-A-Book and e-book programs. I greatly appreciate so many of you taking the time to share your thoughts. I, along with the CSU leadership team, have reviewed all the comments and we are using the feedback to plan how we move forward.
At this time, the Loan-A-Book program will be limited to general education courses, so that you are able to continue keeping textbooks in your major that may be used for reference purposes. However, as stated in last month’s article, we are slowly phasing in this program so that we can make improvements before it is fully deployed. Because of this multi-staged approach, many of you may not be transitioned to Loan-A-Book for some time.
In regards to e-books, the feedback we received was both in support of and in opposition to e-books. Many of you like e-books due to their portability for travel. We are working with our textbook publishers to deploy a “choice model” so you can choose between e-books and printed textbooks for those courses not using the Loan-A-Book program. Normally in higher education, e-books are integrated into the course for all students to use. Therefore, this is something different we are asking the publishers to do and so far things are moving forward well. Unfortunately, this additional complexity will most likely delay the deployment of e-books until early 2015 and then it will be phased in.
At CSU, we all understand that one of the important reasons students choose CSU is that we provide textbooks at no additional charge, combined with our low tuition rates and a full offering of student support services (also at no additional charge). We are committed to this model and the two textbook initiatives mentioned above help make it possible. Both the Loan-A-Book and e-book programs have been part of the CSU policy for a long time and can be read in the Enrollment Agreement Terms and Conditions or on the CSU Tuition and Financing page. Up to this point, they have only been used with limited groups or courses. We are now working to slowly phase them in on a larger scale.
Once again, thank you for your feedback and for choosing Columbia Southern University.
Sincerely,
Robert Mayes
President
Is there an option for e-books to be utilized for classwork??
Wayne, the e-books will allow the reader to add notes, highlight text, and enter bookmarks if desired. In most classes, the books will solely be used as reference material.
I appreciate the extra efforts that CSU is taking to provide books for us. I have been a student since 2013. I am okay with the changes that you are making. I would like to keep all of my books, but I know that there is a cost factor involved. I am willing to make the necessary adjustments to help keep CSU’s cost down and my cost down also.
Thank you again for your time and consideration.
Dorothy Williams
Hi Dorothy, my thoughts exactly. I have no problem with e-books. Any hardcover books I would want to have on hand can be purchased used online. 🙂
If we have any older books that we may have kept but now would like to get rid of, should we send these back to the library?
Amanda, the bookstore would love to take back your old books! Email them at bookstore@columbiasouthern.edu and let them know you would like to send your books back. They will send you a shipping label for the package. Thank you!