E-Mail Communication on October 1, 2010:
Good Morning Deans, Associate Deans, Chairpersons, and ADAs,
As presented at the Chairs and ADAs Workshop at the beginning of the Fall semester, Textbook Rental
Services is out of space. In addition, we are concerned about the safety of our students in the rental
stacks and about ADA compliance for our students and staff with disabilities. As a result, we need to
remove textbooks that are no longer being used by the campus. We currently have over 30 pallets of
books not being used that are stored all around campus due to lack of space in Textbook Rental
Services. Please know that textbooks are never thrown away. If we can sell the textbook, we will do that
first to return dollars to the textbook budget. Over the summer, over $13,700 was returned to the budget
by selling books to wholesalers. If the books have no resale value, departments can request resource
copies; after that, students can have copies for free. The remaining books are all donated. Last year we
donated books to the Student Rotarian World Wide Book Drive and to Bridge to Asia.
During the last several weeks, we worked with the UW-L IT staff to pull data from past and present
databases and 3 different computer systems to generate a list of textbooks that are no longer being used.
This was not an easy task! The report is sorted by "department" and by "instructor by department" and
where possible, includes the last term the book was used along with the course number and instructor. In
some cases, the textbooks still in inventory do not match any historical course or textbook records so this
information could not be pulled. The titles missing information are listed at the very end of the report. We
have also made the Destiny master inventory file of titles currently in Textbook Rental Services available
on the webpage, as requested by the Chairs and ADA’s.
Please visit http://www.uwlax.edu/textbookrental/obsoletebooks.htm to review the "List of Obsolete Books
by Department by Book " and "List of Obsolete Books by Department by Instructor " with your faculty and
staff in the manner you deem most appropriate. To view textbooks for your particular department/subject,
simply click on the Bookmarks tab in the upper LEFT hand corner and then select your
department/subject. If your department shares textbooks with another department, please be sure to
check those departments too. All textbooks on this list will be discarded following the procedure
noted in the first paragraph of this e-mail unless a request is made to keep the title. To make a
request, the department will need to submit the Obsolete Textbook Retention Request Form to Textbook
Rental Services by December 1, 2010. This form is available on the Textbook Rental website at
http://www.uwlax.edu/textbookrental/obsoletebooks.htm.
If you have any questions regarding any textbooks, please feel free to stop down and see us or contact
the Textbook Rental Services Manager, MJ Dontje, at 608-785-8853 or email 1151txt@fheg.follett.com.
Your assistance is greatly appreciated.
Thank you,
Carlena Goddeau
University Wisconsin - La Crosse
Bookstore Manager
1741 State Street
La Crosse, WI 54601
Phone: 608-785-8855
Fax: 608-785-8856