Fall Semester 2008 Textbook Adoptions

Joseph Glover, Provost

A new state statute entitled Textbook Affordability was enacted in the 2008 Legislative session. It has been signed by Governor Crist and became law on July 1, 2008.  A partial text of this legislation pertaining to the textbook adoption process follows:

(3) Community colleges and state universities shall post on their websites, as early as is feasible, but not less than 30 days prior to the first day of class for each term, a list of each textbook required for each course offered at the institution during the upcoming term. The posted list must include the International Standard Book Number (ISBN) for each required textbook or other identifying information, which must include, at a minimum, all of the following: the title, all authors listed, publishers, edition number, copyright date, published date, and other relevant information necessary to identify the specific textbook or textbooks required for each course.

Faculty and departments are required to submit fall term textbook adoptions at http://www.textadoption.ufl.edu by July 25, 2008. Once submitted, this information is available on-line to all bookstores, providing both students and bookstores timely and correct information about textbook requirements.

Web reports have been developed to assist in monitoring compliance and can be found at this site: http://www.bsd.ufl.edu/textadoption/col/collinks.asp” . Fall courses are listed in the bottom section. If you need assistance with the process, please e-mail TextAdoption-WebHelp@bsd.ufl.edu with your questions.

Your efforts in supporting this important legislation will benefit our students greatly in a time when their educational costs will be rising. The greatest benefit of this act will be to provide more opportunities for students to sell their books back thereby creating a much greater market of used textbooks for resale in future semesters.

Please forward this memo to the faculty members in your unit and assist them in complying with the new state statute.