Barnes & Noble Inc. said Monday that it’s launching a textbook rental program for college students.

The new program, available though campus bookstores or the stores’ Web sites managed by the world’s largest bookseller, is designed to cut textbook costs by as much as 50 percent for some titles.

Textbooks rented online will be shipped to a campus bookstore.

The effort, operated through the New York company’s subsidiary Barnes & Noble College Booksellers LLC., is already in place in about 25 campus bookstores nationwide.

Barnes & Noble, which has a store on Staten Island, operates bookstores at nearly 640 colleges across the country.

Its shares dipped 10 cents to $18.20 in pre-market trading Monday after closing Friday at $18.30.