Joliet Junior College
IN-3: Innovation 3

The Joliet Junior College Library has a Textbook Reserve Program where students can use the textbook in the library for 3 hours. For often requested titles, the library provides a second copy of the text. This program is funded through academic departments and the library working in conjunction with the college bookstore. The program was started about ten years ago as a student government initiative with no staff or funding and consisted of just a handful of books, but willing departments. A plea from Pam Dilday, Director of the Office of Student Affairs and Advisor of Student Government to make the program work, led Catherine Suchy, Library Department Chairperson, to take an active role in the program and since then, the college has been able to secure funding and rely on the staff to work on sections of the program. About four years ago, we revived the textbook program and focused on General Education courses exclusively. Once we had a streamlined process in place, we expanded to carry all the textbooks required on campus. This program need attention every semester to update the new adoption while removing the older textbooks. Few institutions can engage in such a project since it can become quickly overwhelming. Our academic departments provide 75% of the titles needed to keep the program up to date and the library closes the gap with titles not supplied by the departments. The bookstore offers the library a substantial discount so we can make this a reality every semester.

For the fall 2015 semester alone, 3267 students used the textbook collection. This represents over 20% of the student population.