Emily Ray, Metadata and Discovery Services Librarian
Ottenheimer Library, University of Arkansas at Little Rock

• Acknowledged increasing cost of textbooks
• Seen as a burden on students and preventing learning
• Seized popular imagination outside the library, university : state legislatures interested, state PIRG groups, media
• Covered by the media, while the academic journal price increases or the academic press crisis ignored
• Textbook costs easier to address than the rising cost of tuition and higher education

• More options from growth of OER
• Academic libraries increasingly more formally involved with teaching and learning, looking at supporting retention
• Libraries historically provide access to content, decide when content worth purchasing

• My library’s pilot with purchasing textbooks
• Two other libraries that purchased print and e-textbooks
• Three library led projects to incentivize faculty to select OER textbooks- what happened
• OER content vs Textbooks
• Who is making the decisions?
• What libraries can do….

• University of Arkansas at Little Rock
• Part of the UA system
• Metropolitan university, not flagship
• Declining enrollment, many non-traditional students, working full or part time, going back to school
• Current enrollment, 8,902 – includes undergraduates, graduate students, PhD programs in Engineering, Computer science
• Library budget cuts last two fiscal years

• Summer 2014 Provost asked then library directory if library can provide access to textbooks
• In exit surveys, students indicate money is a major reason in withdrawing from UALR
• This does fit with the literature identifying that students will not purchase textbooks if they can’t afford them
• Library was given no additional funds for this project, but can’t really say no, either…

• Prior to this UALR did not purchase textbooks as a policy, did add personal copies to reserves
• Collections team was briefed
• Brief literature review
• Surveyed our peers if they were purchasing textbooks
• Allotted $2,000 for a pilot from materials budget, our materials budget, $1.4m, spent a total of $16,900 on monographsincluding textbooks in Fy1415
• Planned goals and priorities

Title
Theater: The Lively Art 8th Edition
Item name
Library copy 1
Library copy 2
Essential World History 7 th
ed.
Ways of the World 2nd edition
Library copy 1
Library copy 2
Library copy 1
Library copy 2
Library copy 3
Biology: Concepts and Applications 9th editionLibrary copy 1
Library copy 2
Libarry copy 3
College Algebra (Robert Blitzer)
Communication in a civil society
Hole's Human Anatomy & Physiology
Chemistry in Focus
Chemistry & chemical reactivity (9th ed)
Library copy 2
Library copy 3
Library copy 1
Library copy 2
Library copy 3
Library copy 1
Library copy 2
Library copy 3
Library copy 1
Library copy 1
Library copy 1
Item # Fall 2014 Spring 2015 i19680168 21 34 i1968017x 22 30 i19680181 i19680193 i1968020x i19680211 i19680223 i19680272 i19680326 i19680351 i19680405 i19680417 i19680429 i19680430 i19680442 i19680454 i19680466 i19680478 i1968048x i1971371x i19713721 i19713733 i19713745
17
0
0
5
9
33
12
5
0
0
6
0
0
36
8
18
7
22
25
33
42
0
19
40
16
24
43
20
7
52
43
14
4
43
107
27
33
21
36
44
109
96

• Previously receiving requests, had purchased some textbooks
• Fall 2014- identified as textbooks, routing to reserves
• E-preferred, buying print when requested
• Unlimited multi user if possible, 2 or 3 user; if many turnaways purchase 2 nd copy
• Have been updating with most recent edition- is getting expensive
• Put this program in their Annual Report- student retention is a concern

• State institution, not part of UA system
• Residential, traditional aged students, library open 24 hr a day
• Budget of $10,000 a year for textbooks
• Get a list of all textbooks for the semester, run against their holding and ebsco e-book availability- e-book preferred, multi user
• “Gratifying” to work with faculty, “hugely popular” with students

• OER textbooks are the most prominent new idea
• Introduced at UNESCO’s 2002 Forum on Open Courseware
• Defined as “teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits free use and repurposing by others. Open education resources include full courses, course materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge “
• Frequently under a Creative commons license

• Grants to motivate faculty to participate, more $ for larger enrollment
• Variety of disciplines participated
• Interest in library purchasing or licensing content, or digitizing their own holdings
• UCLA sees as part of a process of aligning collections more closely with teaching, a different process than acquiring for research needs and interests

• Similar grant program, with a workshop for faculty interested
• Mix of undergrads, grad courses, STEM heavy
• First year, 9 of the 11 winners were creating their own content
• Willing to use less “open” resources, when the cost savings are really high
• Quote of $200,000 calculated from number of students times cost of unpurchased textbook
• Grants used to purchase content, not library funds

Request for Service – Faculty to build
eVersity core curriculum courses
Responses Due: December 5, 2014
Course Requirements: Courses developed for the eVersity will share several common design elements.
In addition to faculty authored course content, all courses will include the following:

Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA): All courses will meet all the requirements of the ADA.

Course Length: Courses will be six weeks in length.

Course Syllabus: Courses will have a syllabus which includes student learning outcomes, assessment requirements, grading rubrics, course policies, due dates and other required course elements.

Course Materials: It is assumed that the courses in this request can be developed using open educational resources (OER). More information on this point is provided elsewhere in this request.

Interactive Features: All courses will feature elements that foster engagement between the
 instructor and the student and between students.
Scalable: All courses will be designed to accommodate growing numbers of students.
Specification of Employment Competencies: All eVersity courses will feature employment focused competencies (e.g., critical thinking, team work, leadership, communication skills, etc.).

• California***
• Connecticut- creating a consortium to assess, promote, collaborate for developing Open Source textbooks
• Ohio – eliminating sales tax on textbooks
• South Carolina- mandating 2 years of adoption for upper level divisions, 3 years for lower level divisions to ensure student buy back value

• “The primary focus of the CA-OER Council is to complete the reviews and move our focus toward faculty adoption of OER texts. The goal hasn’t changed. What has changed is our understanding of the obstacles to OER adoption. “
• January 2014-March 2015 15 month progress reports- most detailed

• Cal State Fullerton Professor reprimanded for selecting less expensive proprietary and OER text combo
• Whose Academic Freedom? Department or Professor? Other?
• Who decides?

• Purchasing textbooks or incentivizing OER
• Still helping students by removing textbook costs
• Immediate help or structural rethinking
• Costs shifted to the library or elsewhere
• Long term viability and scale?

• Libraries have significant expertise and can guide faculty and universities through this process
• Best to be aware as costs are removed from students, might be passed on to the library or other work eg. digitization created

• Popken, Ben. (2015, August 15) College Textbook Prices Have Risen 1,041 Percent Since 1977. NBC News. http://www.nbcnews.com/feature/freshman-year/collegetextbook-prices-have-risen-812-percent-1978-n399926
• Porcaro, Mark. (2013, January 7)) Educause/Internet2 Etext Pilot:
• UALR Core Curriculum http://ualr.edu/advising/home/major/core/
• Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
• MERLOT https://www.merlot.org/
• Fresno State Affordable learning solutions http://fresnostate.edu/academics/als/textbooks.html
• Florida Orange Grove http://florida.theorangegrove.org/og/access/hierarchy.do?topic=d37c6ed5-3822-84a6-721c-6d9033a88541&q=&sort=rank&page=1
• Open Access Resources: Teaching Materials Hilton C. Buley Library Southern Connecticut State University http://libguides.southernct.edu/c.php?g=7150&p=34680
• Open Textbooks SUNY http://textbooks.opensuny.org/
• *UMass Amherst
• Affordable Course Materials Initiative http://www.library.ucla.edu/about/collections/collection-development-initiatives/affordable-course-materials-initiative
• Conversation with Dawn Setzer, UCLA
• Alt Textbook Project http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/alttextbook
• Emails with Will Cross, NCSU
• Partnership for Affordable Content https://www.lib.umn.edu/elearning/partnership/awards and
• https://www.lib.umn.edu/elearning/partnership
• Emails with Shane Nackerund, UMN
• e-Versity University of Arkansas System http://eversity.uasys.edu/
• e-Versity email communication
• California SB 1052 and 1053 http://icas-ca.org/coerc Progress reports
• Reprimanded for Assigning Affordable Textbooks? (2015, Oct 21) Inside Higher Ed. https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2015/10/21/reprimandedassigning-affordable-textbooks
• Jaschik, Scott. Can a Professor Be Forced to Assign a $180 Textbook? (2015, Oct 26) Inside Higher Ed. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/10/26/disputerequired-math-textbook-escalates-broader-debate-about-costs-and-academic