Making Textbooks Affordable: A Successful Initiative at a University Library Stewart Baker Naomi Moy Wei Ma California State University, Dominguez Hills ALA Annual Conference, Anaheim CA June 23rd, 2012 1
Making Textbooks Affordable Naomi Moy nmoy@csudh.edu Textbook Affordability and Student Success 2008 California Bureau of State Auditor Report indicates that CSU students are paying $812 per year for textbooks. Students don t buy all their required resources for learning Students stop out, drop out, don t perform to their academic potential, graduate at a slower rate. Affordability Affects Access to Excellence The CSU s Affordable Learning Solutions Campaign will deploy a multipronged approach to ease the financial burden for students. 2
Making Textbooks Affordable Naomi Moy nmoy@csudh.edu http://als.csuprojects.org Making It Easier To Find Alternative Content Tools Technologies Policies Marketing & deployment strategies 3
Making Textbooks Affordable Naomi Moy nmoy@csudh.edu CSU Provides System Access to No- and Low-Cost Textbook Alternatives Open Textbooks: Over 2,000 FREE online textbooks are available through the AL$ website CSU Library ebooks: CSU systemwide electronic library collections provide students FREE access to ebooks Faculty-Authored Materials: Published and distributed in a variety of ways Lower Cost Publisher etextbooks: Digital rentals in the CSU 4
Making Textbooks Affordable Naomi Moy nmoy@csudh.edu Exemplary Campus Campaign Leadership Campus Campaign Team Communications Campaign Library Leadership in supporting faculty discovery and selection of no- and low-cost content Recognition of Faculty Leadership Collaboration with Bookstore 5
Making Textbooks Affordable Naomi Moy nmoy@csudh.edu CSUDH AL$ Summary in Numbers 127 Faculty Participants, 2010-2012 106 Faculty Participants AY 2011-2012 (all colleges represented) $490,666 Potential student savings Fall 2010 to Fall 2011 (6,918 students in 147 courses) $808,949 Bookstore savings to students from Fall 2010 to Spring 2012 6
Making Textbooks Affordable Naomi Moy nmoy@csudh.edu Guiding Principles For Students and Faculty Choice Content Price Convenience Accessibility Benefits..Are Key Success Factors 7
Making Textbooks Affordable Naomi Moy nmoy@csudh.edu The Beginning Stages (Planning) Planning and Discussions CSU, Provost, Library, Deans Council Bookstore Campus Information Technology, Technology Advisory Committee Academic Senate & Senate Executive Committee 8
Making Textbooks Affordable Naomi Moy nmoy@csudh.edu The Beginning Stages (Announcing) Bringing AL$ to faculty College-specific workshops Special grant project Departmental meetings Emails to faculty introducing AL$ 9
Making Textbooks Affordable Naomi Moy nmoy@csudh.edu Lighting the Fire Bookstore finds and offers rentals even when CSUDH is the only Follett campus to offer a title Library matches its e-resources to courserequired textbooks and notifies faculty Faculty make specific search requests AL$ webpage, especially Faculty Showcase (http://library.csudh.edu/als/showcase/) 10
Making Textbooks Affordable Naomi Moy nmoy@csudh.edu AL$ Home Page, CSUDH 11
Making Textbooks Affordable Naomi Moy nmoy@csudh.edu Faculty Showcase Example Page 12
Making Textbooks Affordable Naomi Moy nmoy@csudh.edu Quick Reserves Page 13
Making Textbooks Affordable Naomi Moy nmoy@csudh.edu Faculty Recognition Faculty Showcase with individual faculty pages listing resources and links to resource used 2011 and 2012 Faculty Recognition Receptions with certificates of recognition/appreciation given to each participant Also provide personally addressed invitations, emails, etc. 14
Making Textbooks Affordable Naomi Moy nmoy@csudh.edu Campus Grants Campus supported additional resource purchase Award of two lottery fund grants totaling $50,000 for purchase of electronic resources Presidential Creative Initiative Program grant provided $11,000 for 15 ipads for student checkout. 15
Making Textbooks Affordable Naomi Moy nmoy@csudh.edu 2012 and Beyond Building ebook collections Patron driven acquisitions (PDA) model Building faculty communities CSU digital literacy group CSUDH brown bags lunches Faculty teaching & learning conferences 16
Making Textbooks Affordable Naomi Moy nmoy@csudh.edu 2012 and Beyond (cont.) Resource development and MERLOT Faculty stipends to create online learning resources Principles of Biology Collaborative project of Nature Publishing and CSU faculty Born-digital, low-cost, interactive textbook http://bit.ly/kbb8cm 17
Making Textbooks Affordable Naomi Moy nmoy@csudh.edu Our Primary Resources Library focus on resources free to students Ebrary ebooks EBSCO ebooks Publisher direct ebooks Articles from subscription databases OERs* found in MERLOT Low-cost books or digital books with value-added online resources (*Open Educational Resources) 18
Making Textbooks Affordable Naomi Moy nmoy@csudh.edu Digital Rentals: Who s Playing? Vendors Serve all CSU Campuses CourseSmart: Independent bookstores Café Scribe: Follett bookstores NookStudy: Barnes & Noble bookstores Cengage Learning: 27% of higher ed market 19
Making Textbooks Affordable Wei Ma wma@csudh.edu Making ebooks Available for Use Loading ebook MARC records to the OPAC MarcEdit: an OpenSource MARC editing utility developed in 2000 by Terry Reese from Oregon State University OpenURL link resolver (SFX) to cross-link ebooks from various resources WorldCat Article databases OPAC etc. 20
Making Textbooks Affordable Wei Ma wma@csudh.edu Making ebooks Available for Use (cont.) Electronic Reserves as a supplement for content not available elsewhere Journal Articles Book Chapters Direct links from AL$ web pages Publisher websites Author websites Software downloads 21
Making Textbooks Affordable Stewart Baker sbaker@csudh.edu Presenting your Initiative on the Web Why build up an online presence? Visibility Incentive Assessment Connect with Students 22
Making Textbooks Affordable Stewart Baker sbaker@csudh.edu Options for the Web Hand-coded System (Static) Hand-coded System (Dynamic) Open-Source Software Suite Commercial Software Suite 23
Making Textbooks Affordable Stewart Baker sbaker@csudh.edu Options for the Web (Hand-Coding) Hand-coded System (Static) Good for small initiatives High maintenance HTML-only means no bells and whistles Hand-coded System (Dynamic) Allows for high levels of customization Specialized skills required Potential for direct faculty data input 24
Making Textbooks Affordable Stewart Baker sbaker@csudh.edu Options for the Web (Software Suites) Open-source Software Suites Free Some specialized skills required Probably no troubleshooting support Faculty handle data input 25
Making Textbooks Affordable Stewart Baker sbaker@csudh.edu Open-source Software Suites WordPress (Best with BuddyPress) MediaWiki Social Networking Suites Elgg Xoops Mahara Full list at Wikipedia: http://bit.ly/o0h7oy 26
Making Textbooks Affordable Stewart Baker sbaker@csudh.edu Options for the Web (Software Suites) (cont.) Commercially-available Software Suites Easy set-up; help when you need it Costly Faculty handle data input 27
Making Textbooks Affordable Stewart Baker sbaker@csudh.edu Commercially-available Software Suites PeopleSoft Social Networking Suites SocialEngine WebNetwork Full list at Wikipedia: http://bit.ly/o0h7oy 28
Making Textbooks Affordable Stewart Baker sbaker@csudh.edu Our Approach Dynamic, hand-coded set of websites PHP/MySQL for data display and input Repurposed existing code from a similar project Input handled by library employees (i.e. Naomi) 29
Making Textbooks Affordable Stewart Baker sbaker@csudh.edu Our Approach (cont.) Back-end Showcase input tool Front-end Faculty Showcase Quick Reserves tab 30
Making Textbooks Affordable Stewart Baker sbaker@csudh.edu Our Approach (cont.) Planned updates Normalize data entry Create searchable resource database for faculty Improve web design 31
Making Textbooks Affordable Stewart Baker sbaker@csudh.edu MERLOT CSU Chancellor s Office initiative Resource-sharing community for faculty and other educators http://merlot.org 32
Making Textbooks Affordable Stewart Baker sbaker@csudh.edu MERLOT (cont.) Peer Reviews Submitted resources undergo a peer reviewing process Multi-stage process Users with reviewed items can opt to receive letters of review for tenure purposes 33
Making Textbooks Affordable Stewart Baker sbaker@csudh.edu MERLOT (cont.) User-submitted Resources Anyone can join and contribute Anyone can comment and rate resources Option to create assignments for resources 34
Making Textbooks Affordable Stewart Baker sbaker@csudh.edu MERLOT (cont.) User-submitted Resources Anyone can join and contribute Anyone can comment and rate resources Option to create assignments for resources 35
Making Textbooks Affordable Stewart Baker sbaker@csudh.edu MERLOT (cont.) Issues to consider Anyone can join and contribute Small portion of active users Small portion of materials reviewed Solution to issues Sign up! 36
Enabling Student Affordability Accessibility Success Choice 37