Textbook Purchasing Guidelines

The AUC Bookstore provides textbook support services to students and faculty, and has done so for 40 years. Textbook usage, like teaching and education, continues to evolve. The bookstore is working closely with Provost Ehab Abdel-Rahman to adapt to these changes and ensure textbook usage is in line with the University’s academic mission and institutional effectiveness goals. Our goal is to enable access to textbooks that are not available elsewhere in a manner that is sustainable, effective and consistent with modern learning approaches. Over the past 10 years, the bookstores have experienced a marked decline in textbook usage, increased inventory of unsold textbooks and the increasing use of digital books and online resources, which are preferred by faculty and students. COVID-19 has exacerbated this change and taken us closer to almost exclusive online learning using e-books and e-textbooks with a few key title exceptions. It is also worth noting that the bookstore faces challenges with shipping and logistics that have in some cases resulted in delays that impact our ability to have books in a timely fashion.

For the purposes of these guidelines, a “textbook” is defined as discipline-specific books that are absolutely required to attend class. All other books that can be found online, free to use, or in the local market such as classic literature or in very small quantities, will not be ordered by the bookstore.

The timeline and guidelines below are intended to support the strategic shift away from physical, printed textbooks to e-textbooks by 2022. This is not only the clear preference of the majority of faculty and students, it is also consistent with advances in online teaching and environmental sustainability.

Textbook Ordering for Fall 2025

• Deadline for order of printed textbooks: Friday, May 31, 2024
• The bookstore will send each department an updated list of all unsold textbooks available in the bookstore that have been ordered by the department in previous semesters. This is to ensure faculty members can see the opportunities available to use currently available and expensively purchased textbook stock.
• Once bookstore staff receive textbook requests, it will examine existing inventory. If the book already exists in stock, no additional copies will be purchased.
• When e-books are available for individual purchase in the market, professors should include the links to purchase on the course syllabus, and students will purchase them directly
• Orders for e-book which are not available for direct individual purchase can be made with advance payment by the students in our store and will be delivered within 10 days.

For book requisitions, please fill in this form