LibGuides: Free, Open, and Affordable Resources: Student Resources

Controlling your Costs—Getting the Textbooks you Need at a Price You Can Afford

It is no surprise that student loan debt is increasing at the same time that textbook costs are on the rise. NIU Libraries wants to help you get the classroom materials you need at a price you can afford. CNBC suggests a few strategies that might help:

Rent instead of buying—If it is a book you do not think you will need later, such as a text for a GenEd course, rent it.
Play the market—Don't buy in August or December/January, when the demand is great. Once you sign up for classes, contact your instructor to find out what materials are required. Get the jump on your peers.
Use the library—Check campus libraries and public libraries before buying or renting your texts.
Shop Around—Use price comparison sites and online search tools to locate and purchase (or rent) your books at the lowest price.

(Adapted from Gernon, D. "Students are Spending Less on Books by Smart Buying." CNBC.com, last modified August 11, 2017, https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/08/one-smart-money-lesson-college-freshmen-can-learn-from-seniors.html).

Huskie Books and Gear—Textbooks to Buy or Rent
Search for and purchase the textbooks assigned for your NIU classes.

Don't buy in August or December/January, when the demand is great. Once you sign up for classes, contact your instructor to find out what materials are required. Get the jump on your peers.

Like most university libraries, NIU Libraries does not routinely buy textbooks for our collection. However, the books you need may be available as e-books or on our shelves—or on the shelves of one of the nearly 90 members of the Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois (CARLI) that participate in I-Share. You may also find what you need at the Reserves Desk.

Search the Library's Catalog via HuskieSearch
Find books, videos, and other resources in NIU Libraries' collections.
Search the Library's eBook Collection via HuskieSearch
Access NIU Libraries' collection of ebooks.
Search All I-Share Libraries via HuskieSearch
Use I-Share to search for library materials from more than 90 academic libraries across the state of Illinois.
Search Course Reserves
Check to see if your instructor has put materials on Reserve for your class. You can search by course name, number, instructor name, or department.
more...less...
Come to the Circulation Desk to check out Reserve items—most items have short loan periods and cannot leave the library.
Search Hathi Trust Digital Repository
Access to vast repository of digital content from more than 60 member research libraries.
Ask a Librarian
If you still need help, ask a librarian via Chat or Email.

Find books

DISCLAIMER: NIU Libraries does not endorse any of the following sites.

Textbook Rental

DISCLAIMER: NIU Libraries does not endorse any of the following sites.

Textbook Buying/Selling Online

DISCLAIMER: NIU Libraries does not endorse any of the following sites.

Art Images for College Teaching
Emphasis on ancient, medieval, and Renaissance European art and architecture.
Bartleby.com
Free and downloadable reference materials and non-fiction works.
Bibliomania
Free access to non-copyright protected classic texts, thousands of e-books, poems, articles, short stories and plays.
Digital Public Library of America
Discover 38,769,388 images, texts, videos, and sounds from across the United States.
Europeana Collections
A vast collection of digitized books, art, and music.
Google Books
A constantly growing collection. Best to search by title and author.
Internet Archive
An archive of web pages, audio recordings, videos, books, and images.

Kanopy This link opens in a new window
Kanopy - furnishes more than 30,000 streaming video titles for a broad variety of academic disciplines. An annual subscription is available on request for $150 per title. Owing to expense only faculty requests for mandatory class assignments will be honored. Students who generate a Kanopy request will be directed to contact their instructor.

Law Review Commons
Free and open law review scholarship.
LibriVox
Free public domain audio books.
ManyBooks
Free and inexpensive ebooks from Project Gutenberg and various online vendors—also features self-published materials.
Online Books Page
An index of over two million online books freely readable on the Internet with pointers to significant directories and archives of online texts.
Open Culture
A collection of free ebooks, audio books, textbooks, films, and language lessons.
Oxford Text Archive
Provides access to thousands of high-quality, well-documented electronic texts in a variety of languages and downloadable formats.
Project Gutenberg
Best Bet The first provider of free eBooks, provides access to over 33,000 books which may be downloaded as HTML, simple text formats, or to a variety of portable devices.
Textbook Revolution
A student-run site focused on free education materials.
WolframMathWorld
An online math reference tool.