Q. Does the library stock textbooks?

Sorry, the UCF Main Orlando Campus John C. Hitt Library rarely has copies of textbooks since the collection development policy excludes the purchase of them. It is the policy of the UCF Libraries to acquire the best materials for the library collection we can based on available funds and the collection development policies for each subject area. While on occasion this might include the purchase of a book which happens to be used as a textbook there is no expectation that the specific textbooks assigned by UCF faculty will be acquired. There are approximately 7,000 textbook titles in use for a single semester at UCF and acquiring just a single copy of each one would consume a huge chunk of the book budget. A single copy of a textbook would only meet the needs of a single student and many of the titles would be obsolete in a year.

Occasionally an older or online edition of a textbook may be found in the collection. You may want to search the Basic Search/Catalog Search feature on the library's home page, http://library.ucf.edu/ using the title and author of the textbook to verify whether or not your textbook is available. We recommend AGAINST searching by the ISBN because the results would not include other editions. You also may want to check Course Reserves to see if your instructor put a copy on Reserve.

Don't know the author and title of your textbooks? Either check the syllabus for your course or use the UCF Bookstore's search form.

The UCF Bookstore provides an online form for you to create Your Customized Textbook List.

• Step One -- Find Your Courses, selecting the term, department, course, and section. Repeat for each course to build a list.
• Step Two -- Review Your Courses -- once you have built a list of courses, you can view the list of textbooks for all of your courses. You can then select items for purchase from the UCF Bookstore or use the information to compare prices from other sources.