College and university adoption and use of books as common reads has increased over the last several years. The growing popularity has also brought to light significant variations in how colleges and universities select and use common read texts. In some higher educational institutions, one tome is selected for all freshmen to read and discuss…

Professors have long assigned to their students works of which they were the author. The practice ranges from assigning commercially published textbooks they have written to having students buy a volume they have written and published or course packs made up of their own materials they have photocopied. Not only individual professors, but also…

Little research has focused on what factors undergraduate students consider when selecting books at academic libraries. In order to better understand student book choices at Niagara University Library, we chose 11 sets of two books with the same LC subject headings but with other differences and asked students to select one book over another.…