The Educational Materials Inventory

The Educational Materials Inventory (EMI) is an SGA program intended to help address the high cost that students pay each semester for books, textbooks, notebooks, lab materials, art supplies, and more. This program is in response to the Accessible Course Materials Survey that SGA asked for student responses to in the Spring of 2019. If you would like to see the findings from the survey, click here.

The EMI will take donations of books that have been used in prior classes and make these books available, for free, at the beginning of the next semester, functioning as an alternative to the buyback process available through the SkidShop. 

This program will be run off of books donated by you, the student body. At the end of the semester, the EMI will have donation boxes around campus where you can donate your used books. The books the EMI collects will be sorted between semesters and an online catalog of the books will be available so that you know whether or not the EMI has the books you need for the coming semester. The books will be available at scheduled times at the beginning of the semester on a first-come, first-serve basis.

The EMI is a great option for you if (1) the SkidShop can’t buy your books back, (2) the SkidShop will buy your books but you want to help future students, or (3) you don’t want to sell your books back for pennies on the dollar. Please consider donating your books to the EMI at the end of the semester so that we can help make course materials more accessible for our community. When donating, consider writing the course name, assigning professor’s name, and department the book was from to help in the sorting and cataloging process. The EMI will probably neither have every book that will be used in the following semester nor enough of the books that will be used for every student. However, as this program develops we hope to grow the EMI in order to help more students. SGA’s Academic Council will be facilitating this program in collaboration with the Scribner Library, the SkidShop, and the Office of Sustainibility.

If you have any questions or comments, please contact Emilka Jansen, the SGA VP for Academic Affairs, at ejansen@skidmore.edu. 

The EMI has donation boxes:

1.    Outside the SGA office (right by the SkidShop)

2.    In the Atrium @ dhall

3.    By the Case Information Desk