From Course Reserves to Comprehensive Course Materials Lists: Automating Our Textbook Collection

As part of a textbook affordability project, Florida Gulf Coast University's library had been adding over a thousand library-owned books to reading lists manually every semester and we knew there must be a better way. We will tell you about how we used built-in jobs in Alma/Leganto, a homegrown textbook database, Python scripts, and even a cloud app shared by ELUNA colleagues to take a process that had occurred over the course of weeks and cut it down to a couple of days of running jobs and cleaning up data. In this presentation, we will show you how this mid-size library was able to start loading complete textbook information into our Leganto course materials lists, along with matching library inventory, each semester using automation. We will also share our observations about how this proactive approach has impacted campus engagement with the Leganto platform.