The Columbia FLI Partnership Library is a collection of textbooks and other course materials available to first-generation and/or low-income (FGLI) students from one of Columbia University's undergraduate schools: Columbia College (CC), the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), or General Studies (GS), as well as students from Barnard College. The FLI Partnership Library is a collaboration between FLI Network (FLI Net), a recognized student club at Columbia University, and the Columbia University Libraries. The group primarily builds community for students who identify as first-generation and/or low-income, actively creates and advertises resources needed by FGLI students, and advocates for and implements institutional change with the help of library and other university administrators.

At Columbia, a first-generation student is defined as a student whose parent(s)/guardian(s) never received a four-year U.S. bachelor’s degree. There is no specific income level that determines eligibility for students to check out materials from the FLI Partnership Libraries; however, low-income students typically have little to no expected parental contribution as part of their financial aid package. Students who identify as first-generation or low-income and who register can borrow materials from the collection for extended loan periods. Columbia's FLI Partnership Library is located on the third floor of Butler Library, Room 303A. Barnard also maintains its own FLI Partnership Library at the back of the fourth floor of the Barnard Library, and qualified Columbia undergraduates may similarly borrow from that collection.

The FLI Partnership (then called FLIP) lending library started as a fully student-led initiative in 2014. The group began its work by collecting donated textbooks from students at the end of each semester. The emphasis of this early collection effort was on the Core Curriculum, particularly course materials for Literature Humanities (Lit Hum) and Contemporary Civilization (CC).

The collection was initially kept in a storage closet in a Columbia residence hall. The Libraries reached out to offer space within Butler Library for the collection, and the group coordinated in Spring 2015 with then Undergraduate Services Librarian Anice Mills to relocate the collection to the fourth floor of Butler Library. (A 2017 Libraries blog post provides more information about this relocation.) By the end of the Spring semester, the collection had grown to approximately 2,500 titles. During the Fall 2016 semester, more than 1,000 loans were made to FLI students.

The original partnership between the Libraries and the FLI Network involved the Libraries’ housing the collection in the corridor between rooms 406A and 409 on the west side of Butler’s fourth floor; however, these books were not added to the Libraries’ catalog, CLIO, until January 2020. Before this, students borrowed books from the FLI collection using the honor system, emailing the FLI Net group to notify its members. Butler staff were responsible neither for maintaining/organizing the collection nor for acquiring new material; both jobs were handled by the student group. The Libraries separately granted—through the efforts of Libraries Information Technology (LIT)—self-identifying FGLI students extended, semester-long borrowing privileges for CUL collections; however, the borrowing privileges did not directly affect Columbia’s FLI collection because those books were not yet cataloged.

At the urging of student Jasmin Torres Pinon and other members of the FLI Partnership student group, and through the efforts of student worker and group member Ana Pérez Villagómez—in coordination with staff in Access Services and Humanities & History—the FLI Partnership collection was moved to Butler 401 (in the newspaper alcove) in the summer of 2019. As part of that move, the collection was lightly weeded. Having been built mainly through donation drives, the collection was a desultory assortment of pertinent curricular material alongside books much less relevant to coursework. The collection also primarily consisted of relatively cheap editions of Core readings such as the Lattimore translation of the Odyssey.

Finally in January 2020, Columbia’s FLI Partnership collection was processed and cataloged in Voyager through a collaborative effort of staff across the Libraries, led by staff members Ian Beilin (Humanities Research Services Librarian), Jeremiah Mercurio (Head, Humanities & History), Mayra Alvarez (Assistant Head of Circulation & Support Services), Freddy Claudio (Binding & Shelf Processing Supervisor), and Mark Wilson (Director of Collections Acquisition and Description). Once in Voyager/CLIO, the FLI Partnership books could enter regular circulation and maintenance routines. Acquisitions and cataloging are mostly handled by Humanities & History in coordination with a designated student worker, Binding and Shelf-Processing staff and, when necessary, Collections Acquisitions and Cataloging staff.

In Summer 2020, the collection, like the student group, changed its name from FLIP to the FLI Partnership to avoid the racial epithet evoked by the former.

Starting in 2020, the Libraries began to work more closely with the student group on proactively acquiring new titles for the FLI Partnership lending library. In addition to its foundational emphasis on the Core Curriculum, the collection’s focus currently centers on alleviating FGLI students’ financial burden by collecting expensive textbooks and related course materials for undergraduate courses across the curriculum. The Libraries also collect electronic versions of textbooks, primarily with unlimited-user licenses, when available. In addition to assigned course materials, the collection includes test-preparation manuals, workbooks, and other material for educational or professional advancement that would otherwise be financially burdensome to FGLI students. 

Columbia University undergraduates can also borrow from Barnard College’s FLI Partnership Library. Student organizers first approached Barnard librarians about the potential partnership in Fall 2017, and the collection launched in Fall 2018, seeded by a student-run book drive and a modest College-funded allocation for acquisitions. In Summer 2018, ahead of the lending library’s launch, Barnard librarians worked with colleagues from Columbia University Libraries’ Information Technology unit, Breck Witte and Evelyn Ocken, to develop the special user status for FGLI students’ expanded borrowing privileges and to catalog Barnard’s FLI library in CLIO.

The Libraries welcome acquisition suggestions from students, faculty, and researchers.