The model
For most undergraduate courses, the required textbook is rented to you through the Instructional Resources Service and the cost is covered by a course-materials fee already in your tuition and fees. You do not shop for these books, price-compare editions, or pay a bookstore several hundred dollars in week one. You pick them up and you return them.
Pick-up
Rental texts are distributed from the Instructional Resources Service in the lower level of Halvorsen Library at the start of each term. Bring your Porter Card and your class schedule. Many students collect everything in one visit during the week before classes; lines are shortest then. Books added after a late registration are held for you to pick up once your schedule updates.
Return
Rented books are due back by the last day of finals. Return them to the same office; you get a receipt. A book kept past the deadline, or returned damaged beyond normal use — water, a broken spine, heavy writing — is billed to your student account at a replacement cost, and an unpaid balance becomes a hold.
What rental does not cover
Consumables you write in or use up — lab manuals, workbooks, art and shop supplies, some coding and access codes, clickers — are yours to buy and keep; those appear as a course fee or a campus-store purchase. A handful of upper-level and graduate courses use materials outside the rental system; the syllabus says so.
Highlighting and notes
Light pencil is fine and erased at return. Heavy highlighting, ink, or notes make a book non-rentable and you are charged for it. If you learn by marking up a text, buy your own copy of that one — the campus store and used-book sites both sell them — and rent the rest.
Digital and inclusive-access titles
Some courses use a digital text delivered straight into the course site on the first day; that is also covered by the materials fee, and there is an opt-out window each term if you would rather source it yourself. Watch the deadline — after it, the charge stands.
Why it works
Rental keeps a predictable four-figure cost off students entirely, means an instructor can require the book they actually want without worrying about price, and keeps editions consistent across every section. The trade-off is you do not build a personal library of course texts — which most students find they do not miss.
Fictional information
UW–Porter Falls is a work of parody. Every office, person, building, phone number and statistic on this page is invented; nothing here describes a real institution or a service you can actually contact.