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Due to COVID-19, Barnard Library is closed until further notice, with continuing of select library services. Please understand there may be interruptions in service as we support staff in this challenging time. Reach out to library@barnard.edu about course reserves, materials renewals, or fines and other questions, and refdesk@barnard.edu for research consultations and library instruction. See the IMATS site for assistance with distance learning.

Barnard FLI Partnership Library

The Barnard FLI Partnership Library is a part of the Barnard Library dedicated to lending textbooks to and in collaboration with first-generation and/or low-income undergraduate students. We add materials to the collection based on assessment of required courses for Barnard majors. We update the collection based on use data, and as a result we focus on expensive textbooks for STEM and language learning classes.

The foundation and sustenance of the Barnard FLI Partnership Library is grounded in four values: 

  • Equity: This collection is created by and for first-generation and/or low-income students to partially address an equity gap and work toward low-cost or no-cost access to courses. We reserve semester-long borrowing privileges to low-income and/or first-generation students.
  • Partnership: The Barnard FLI Partnership Library was founded as and continues to be a collaboration between the Barnard Library, Columbia First-Generation Low-Income Partnership student organization, and Barnard SGA. The collection is also a sibling collection to the Butler FLIP Library, located on the fourth floor of the Butler Library. The creation of both collections was made possible by the work of student organizers and their initiation of a collaboration between Barnard Library and the Columbia University Library IT department team. 
  • Privacy: It is crucial to us that students can check out materials from the collections without being required to publicly identify themselves as low-income and/or first-generation students.
  • Accessibility: We want to ensure that the process of checking out a book from the Barnard FLI Partnership Library is as efficient and simple as possible.

Please note that this is one of several ways you might access materials for your courses; for a full guide, please also refer to the Find & Borrow Course Materials webpage.

Faculty, for information on making your course materials available at no cost to your students, please visit the Setting Up Course Reserves & Barnard FLI Partnership Library Connections webpage.

Frequently Asked Questions

For a guide to the full series of moves for researching library-provided course texts, including from the Barnard & Butler FLI Partnership Libraries, visit Course Materials.

Sign Up:

Any student who identifies as low-income and/or first-generation and attends Barnard College, Columbia College, the School of Engineering and Applied Science, or the School of General Studies may check out materials from the Barnard or Butler FLI Partnership Libraries. To receive borrowing privileges, students must complete the private online FLI Partnership Libraries Access Form. This way, the process of receiving access is as private as possible, while still ensuring that only those who identify as low-income and/or first-generation undergraduate students access the collection’s materials.

Up to two business days after entering the form, your account access will be updated in the system. You can check out books from the Barnard and Butler FLI Partnership Libraries as you would any other library book. Once granted access, students may check out items from the Butler or Barnard FLI Partnership Libraries collections for the entire semester with unlimited renewals. If you need to check out the book before your access is automatically updated, please ask us at the desk and we will update the due date manually.

Borrow Books:

Search the catalog: To find out if the textbook you need is available in our collection, check CLIO, the catalog for Barnard and Columbia Libraries. You can search CLIO for “flip library” (we are working on updating this search to “fli partnership library”) and any other search terms to search both the Barnard and Butler FLI Partnership Libraries. 

Find the book: The Barnard FLI Partnership Library is located on the fourth floor of the Barnard Library. The Butler FLI Partnership Library is located on the fourth floor of the Butler Library. 

Check out: Check out the book as you would any other library material. You have unlimited renewals; you can renew these in CLIO at the top right of the page under log in to my account.

The formal definition of a first-generation college student is a student whose parents did not complete a bachelor’s degree. However, at the Barnard Library, our definition is not rigid— rather, we consider a first-generation student to be any student who may self-identify as not having prior exposure to or knowledge of navigating institutions such as Barnard and Columbia and may need additional support. For example, this may include students whose parents attended a four-year college in an educational system outside of the United States, or students who have only had close contact to people with minimal college experience.

There is no income level that determines eligibility for students to check out materials from the Barnard FLI Partnership Library. However, low-income students typically have little to no expected parent contribution as part of their financial aid package. 

Thank you for thinking of supporting the Barnard FLI Partnership Library!

To donate to the fund to purchase needed textbooks to be lent through the Barnard FLI Partnership Library, visit Giving to Barnard and designate your gift for the "Barnard FLI Partnership Library". Thank you for making course texts more accessible for Barnard students!

Before donating any materials to the Barnard FLI Partnership Library, please reach out to barnardfliplibrary@barnard.edu with a list of books you would like to donate. We will review whether the titles are currently needed and reconnect with you before you bring them to the Barnard Library. Please ensure that any book(s) you're emailing about meet the following guidelines. We look forward to talking together. 

The Barnard FLI Partnership Library accepts books of these types:

  • Books in good physical condition
  • STEM, social science, or language textbooks, or test prep books used in current or upcoming Columbia and/or Barnard courses

The Barnard FLI Partnership Library is unable to accept books of these types:

  • Books that are in poor physical condition–including missing pages, broken spines, or significant staining
  • Books that are heavily annotated, written in, or highlighted in pen, highlighter, or other permanent markers
  • Books that are not being used in current or upcoming Columbia and/or Barnard courses
  • Novels, creative essays, and other non-textbook formats

Contact Kristen Hogan, Barnard Library Director of Collections Strategy & Library Operations, and Christina Juste, Barnard Library Student Associate for the Barnard FLI Partnership Library, to start a conversation. We look forward to hearing from you!