New Students Guide

To get the textbooks you need for your classes, you need to answer the following questions:

To answer the second question, you may wish to explore the following on-campus resources:

At the risk of stating the obvious, before acquiring your textbooks, you need to know what books you need to acquire.

Two likely sources of this information are:

• Canvas (Your syllabus should include required textbooks for the class.)
• Campus Bookstore
• PAWS

To access the bookstore's website:

1. Go to the university's website.
2. At the top of the page, click on the LINKS FOR and STUDENTS.
3. Under Student Services, click on Books & Course Materials.
4. Select Shop for Textbooks (Main Campus Students).
5. Click the COURSE MATERIALS & TEXTBOOKS tab (near the top of the page), followed by Find Course Materials.

A final option is to access the Registration section of PAWS, as described for Signing up for Classes. One of the links in this section is for Reserve/Order Course Textbooks Online.

If you are an online student, you can order your textbooks through the virtual bookstore. 

To access the bookstore's website:

1. Go to the university's website.
2. At the top of the page, click on the LINKS FOR and STUDENTS.
3. Under Student Services, click on Books & Course Materials.
4. Scroll down to Florida Tech Online and Education Center Textbooks. 
5. Click Order from Florida Tech Bookstore. 
6. Click Let's Get Started.
7. Enter your course information to view your required course materials. 

Once you have identified your needed textbooks, you may either purchase or rent (in the case of some eBooks) them from the campus bookstore.

While the Evans Library does not have copies of all textbooks, students may sometimes access textbooks through the Evans Library. To determine the availability of textbooks:

1. Go to the Library website.
2. Under the More Ways to Search section, click on Library Catalog.

• You may have greater success searching for the book if you set the drop-down menu to either Title or Author.

If you find the book in our collection, you will find that it is in either print or electronic form. The image below shows a catalog search result in which the book is available in both of these formats.

Electronic books are available online at any time.

In the example pictured above, note that the last line of each entry provides two pieces of information:

• Availability
• Location

The loan periods are: 

• Undergraduates may borrow books for 14 days
• Graduate students may borrow books for 30 days. 
• Unless someone else has submitted a request for your book, you may renew it up to 4 times.

Books located in Reserves - iDesk or Instructor Reserves - iDesk may be requested at the iDesk on the ground floor of the library. You may only use them within the library. Most reserves can only be used for a maximum of two hours. If you are interested in a particular part of the book, scanners on the ground floor may be used, free of charge, to make PDF copies of the content of interest. 

Textbooks placed on reserve at the iDesk are the most recent editions the Library owns, whereas those available for borrowing are typically earlier editions. Another way to check if your required textbook is on reserve at the iDesk is to:

• Go to the library website.
• Under More Ways to Search, click on Course Reserves.