We are pleased to share an important change in our handling of textbooks that will provide many benefits to students and faculty.
Starting with the spring semester, we are switching to a new, online bookstore model in which faculty will submit course material information through a portal and students will place orders through a school-branded online bookstore website. Students will receive physical textbooks by mail and digital courseware by email.
Students will be able to access the online bookstore at tusculum.textbookx.com. The site is not live at the moment, but we will notify them when it is ready for student orders.
The change comes after careful evaluation in response to rising textbook costs and a growing trend of students to buy books from online sellers. Our online bookstore will provide a streamlined textbook adoption process for faculty and affordable textbook options, as well as convenience and choice, for students.
We have selected Akademos as our exclusive vendor for these services. Akademos has provided students at more than 150 schools with many low-cost textbook options and significant savings.
Students can log into the website with their student email account to see a personalized page of the courses for which they registered and the course materials their professors have assigned. They can select from the new, used, rental and eBook options, and they can choose textbooks from third-party marketplace merchants and students around the country at heavily discounted prices.
Akademos will provide a web portal for faculty to submit their course materials. For the spring semester, Akademos and Tusculum will input course materials into the bookstore on faculty members’ behalf. In the future, faculty and administrators will be able to view courses they will teach or oversee, select the materials they want to use and see the costs for students. The bookstore’s portal also has an option to create coursepacks; Akademos will handle necessary copyright clearance.
Even though we are making this modification with textbooks, we will still operate the bookstore in the Scott M. Niswonger Commons to sell branded merchandise such as clothing items, flags, key chains, school supplies and snacks. However, textbooks will no longer be available there.
Should you have questions, please email Connie Stanton, assistant bookstore manager, at cstanton@tusculum.edu.