Here are some ideas that may or may not work for you, but hopefully something will be helpful. If you have questions or would like to discuss any of these further please let us know:
• If you’re using very limited sections of a book, and/or you use it often, you can scan these sections and upload them to Canvas for students to access directly. Canvas stores these PDFs for you indefinitely so it’s easy to add to future courses (this is by far the most economical option – we’re happy to help you get started with this if necessary!)
•Use Canvas to post relevant selections from out of print materials that are no longer available – out of print books are usually very expensive, if we can find them at all
• Explore all options/versions of course materials – sometimes an eBook is available at a fraction of the cost of the hard copy. You can adopt all acceptable editions and include a note saying students need to purchase only ONE version, whichever version works best for them
•Adopt books on time to ensure students selling books at buyback get the most money for them AND allow us more time to source as many used copies as possible. It also allows students to see the cost of their materials at the time of registration so they can plan accordingly.
• Encourage students to use MiddBooks which is a student peer to peer bookselling site – so when they’re done at the end of the semester they can sell their books directly to another student on campus who will be taking the class next semester (this also keeps books on campus and reduces carbon footprint with shipping)
We have heard from multiple faculty members that they’re not familiar with Canvas and it’s one of our favorite resources available here – Midd actually has an entire department dedicated to helping faculty use it – so if you’re unfamiliar, here are some links with info:
https://dlinq.middcreate.net/portfolio/canvas/
https://mediawiki.middlebury.edu/LIS/Canvas
And here’s a spot to book time with one of the staff members who can guide you through using Canvas: