San Jacinto College South offers textbook lending program

Student Carlos Espino gathers textbooks provided by the South Campus textbook lending program. Photo credit: Andrea Vasquez, San Jacinto College marketing department.

The San Jacinto College South Campus library is once again offering a textbook lending program to qualifying students at no cost.

Administered by South Campus Library Director Richard McKay, the program sets out to help financially burdened students achieve their academic goals. McKay understands that required textbooks can be prohibitively expensive, with a single required science, history or math textbook costing more than $100. A full-time student taking 12 or more credits faces a bill that can be several hundred dollars.

To qualify for the textbook lending program, students are asked to submit a statement describing their financial condition and a list of books they will need for the upcoming semester. The library then purchases any books it does not already have on its shelves from the campus bookstore. These books are entered into the library's reserve collection and lent to qualifying students.

The program is the result of a student success initiative grant from the SJC Foundation that was implemented in January 2010. Since August of the same year, the library has funded the project, spending nearly $22,000 on textbooks the first year and helping more than 140 students have access to textbooks they needed for class free of charge.

The San Jacinto College South Campus is located at 13735 Beamer Road, Houston.