In the 90s in the US, for more hard science and math courses, the course was taught against course notes that you needed to buy from one of the many print shops next to the university. This was spiral bound, often a couple hundred pages and costing 20-40$ because that is how much a short run print job costed. These were made by the instructors.

For courses where a book was required, you could check a book out from the reserve and photocopy the whole thing on one of the many high speed photocopiers on campus that all shared a linked card system, so you didn't have to use coins.

I went to San Jose state university a decade ago. It wasn't unexpected to find that some books could be bought there similarly where you pay for basically a photocopy bound with a spiral binding.

This is how I did my entire CS grad (4 years full time) in Brazil.

Never got a single book.