The purpose of the Textbook Notice is to communicate the list of required materials, ordering instructions, and bookstore policies to students in a particular course. The notice also contains the information that students need should they wish to purchase texts from other retailers.
When a notice is emailed to students, it is received by everyone on the distribution list as well as the program associate, the instructor (if requested), and the Library Staff who work the front desk. A copy is also printed and filed at the counter so that students can look up their notice if they don't have a copy on hand when they come to purchase books on campus.
A draft of the notice is prepared using the information on the requisition the program associate submits to the bookstore. Melanie then edits the notice once the books are in stock. The Copyright Office will also check to see if links are available to eBooks in the RRU Library collection.
Once the notice is ready, Melanie will send it to the program associate for final confirmation. We ask you to check the contents, specifically course number, date, and book information to ensure it matches your request. We also ask if it can be combined with other notices. Because students pay for shipping per order (not per book), it saves the students money if we can combine their shipments.
We aim to give our students one month's notice for their text information. We schedule the notice to be emailed out one month before the Learner Need Date. That date is the day that the students need to have their textbooks in hand. It could coincide with the course start date, or if there is prework, it could be several weeks before. If you provide us the date students need to have their texts, we will aim to email the notice out one month before that date providing all the books are in stock. If there are special circumstances, for example, a course starts on October 28th, but students are in residency until September 5th, and you would like them to be able to purchase texts before they leave campus, you would list the need date as September 5th and then add a note in the requisition that you would like the notice to be sent out during residency before they leave on the 5th.
If you have questions about your textbook notice, please contact Melanie Armstrong at ext. 4263.