Eastern Kentucky University is launching a textbook rental program at no cost to students. Beginning in the fall semester of 2021, the EKU BookSmart initiative will be available to all undergraduate students, both on campus and online.
Eastern is joining with Barnes and Noble, the book retailer who’s been associated with EKU for more than two decades. EKU President David McFaddin called it a book scholarship program. “As we think about our merit scholarship pool, our needs based scholarship pool, our philanthropic scholarship pool, were going to bring all those resources together to support the program and bring this to fruition for as long as we possibly can,” said McFaddin.
McFaddin said the intent is to make it an ongoing program. There will be no upfront cost to students. Textbooks will be on loan for use throughout the semester but must be returned to Barnes and Nobel at the EKU bookstore at the end of the semesters. Students will be given an opportunity to purchase books at that point at a discounted price.
McFaddin also sees an expansion of the existing open access textbooks program. “As we continue to see those open access textbooks continue to grow and be available it’s going to mitigate some of the costs of the program as well, but we’re still getting the impact for the students,” noted McFaddin.
The open access textbook program involves transitioning some classes’ required readings to openly available or library resources.
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