Interlibrary Loan has a long and complicated history with textbooks. For years, our community has wavered on whether we should allow textbook borrowing and lending. We have partnered with university bookstores, circulation and acquisition departments, consortia libraries, and even faculty members to find a solution that will both prevent high ILL costs and provide affordable access to textbooks for students.

What if there’s a better solution? Because of our personal and acute awareness of the high cost of textbooks, we are perfectly situated to become advocates of Open Educational Resources (OERs).

I will present a very brief synopsis of textbooks in interlibrary loan, an overview of Open Educational Resources, and ways that ILL librarians can become OER advocates.

Attendees will learn the background of and various ways of managing textbook borrowing and lending through Interlibrary Loan, will be introduced to Open Educational Resources, and will discover ways to promote the use of low and no cost textbooks through Interlibrary Loan.