IT Professionals:
As you may have already heard, the IU Bookstore will soon be under new management [1]. The UITS Learning Technologies team would like to make you aware so that you can help instructors negotiate this once in a decade transition to a new bookstore vendor.
Please know that UITS is working hard to ensure all necessary IT systems are in place to facilitate this change. Currently, we have the following details to share:
If your faculty are currently ordering class materials through Barnes & Noble, here’s what they need to know:
- This change does not impact the Fort Wayne campus
- Barnes & Noble will continue to be IU’s bookstore provider through May 23, 2022
- The university will be communicating details of this transition to students.
- The Follett ordering procedure, coming in late March, will have a new look and feel, but will be a similar experience:
- Ordering will be done via a new task in IU
- Follett will offer training and support, both virtually and in-person
- Schools and departments may designate staff who may submit orders on behalf of faculty.
- Additional communication will be sent to faculty directly and shared via IU Today when it’s time to start submitting orders to Follett.
Important Ordering Timelines
- If an instructor’s class begins on May 23 or earlier, they will submit their order via the Barnes & Noble Adoption Insights Portal (AIP)
- May 9 is the last day Barnes and Noble will accept orders through AIP.
- If an instructor’s class begins on May 24 or later, they will submit their order via the new Follett Discover portal once it becomes available
- Follett recommends faculty submit late summer orders by April 15 and fall orders by May 13.
- Even if faculty have already placed their order for a late summer or fall class in the B&N portal, they must still submit a new order through the Follett portal.
- However, they do not need to cancel any late summer or fall orders they submitted in the Barnes & Noble portal.
An FAQ about this transition is available for your reference [2].
Additionally, you should know there are NO CHANGES necessary for any faculty who order their course materials through IU eTexts. To help reinforce this point, we have provided sample text that can be used in faculty communications or newsletters at the bottom of this mailing.
–IT Community Partnerships on behalf of IU eTexts
[1] Partnership with Follett: https://today.iu.edu/live/news/1412-iu-has-new-bookstore-partnership-with-follett
[2] FAQ: https://uits.iu.edu/textbook-ordering
~~~~~ Suggested Text of Mailing ~~~~~
Subject Line: No changes to IU eTexts ordering
As you may have heard, the IU Bookstore will soon be under new management. If you are an instructor who currently orders class materials through IU eTexts or work with faculty who do, there is no need to do anything differently when making your next order. And we’ve improved our process—going forward, you know longer need to advise the Follett bookstore when you order via IU eTexts.
If you have only ordered through Barnes and Noble in the past, now might be the perfect time to switch to IU eTexts. The IU eTexts initiative has been a proven method of delivering high quality course materials for more than ten years. As the initiative begins its second decade, our numbers continue to grow. Across all nine IU campuses, etexts are used in over 3,511 classes by more than 1,700 faculty members. That works out to $7 million in combined savings to the 52,000+ students using etexts and other digital course materials.
When you use IU eTexts, you can choose from a catalog of nearly 250,000 titles from more than 50 publishers. In addition, your students have benefits including:
- First day codeless access to your required course materials
- Steep discounts—up to 90% of print list prices
- All McGraw Hill textbooks are priced at $38 for Fall 2022
- All Pearson textbooks are priced at $26.31 for Fall 2022
- No bookstore markup
- Payable through bursar billing with financial aid awards
- Refund protection for students who leave course before last refund date
The IU eTexts Order Tool is open now in One.iu.edu. Deadlines for ordering can be found at Deadlines and Timelines. Miss your campus deadline? No problem! See Post Deadline Ordering for details.
Watch for more information about the IU Bookstore.
For self-paced information about using IU eTexts, check out the Canvas site, IU eTexts: a Faculty and Staff Introduction.
For questions, concerns, assistance, discussion, guidance, demonstration, etc., please e-mail etexthlp@iu.edu or schedule an online consultation with Noma Maier or Mark Goodner