The document outlines a case study from Loyola University New Orleans on the adoption of electronic alternatives to traditional textbooks to alleviate student financial burdens. It discusses the challenges of textbook costs, the response from faculty to utilize open textbooks and electronic reserves, and the current state of open educational resources. The document also highlights barriers to adoption, faculty and student satisfaction, and future advocacy efforts in promoting open access materials.

1. Electronic
Alternatives to
Textbooks for
Your Students
Teri Gallaway & Jim Hobbs, Loyola University New Orleans
Learning with LOUIS
March 23, 2015

2. Electronic Alternatives to
Textbooks for Your Students
• Goal: To learn about the changing
textbook world with a case study of how
Loyola librarians worked with teaching
faculty to provide alternatives to
purchasing expensive textbooks for
students.

3. Background issues
• Textbook cost challenges many students
• Average cost: $1250
• Cost of college and student loan debt
• Challenging employment market
• Value of higher education under attack
• Emphasis on assessment and productivity

4. Loyola’s response
• Encourage faculty to adopt open textbooks
• Invite faculty to make more use of
electronic reserves
• Request copies of print textbooks from
faculty
• Purchase the most-needed print textbooks

5. Current situation
• Textbook market and student costs/debt
• Higher education funding in decline
• First-generation students with higher
financial need
• Assumption: “Everything is free online”
• Government budget and policy changes
• State-supported institutions budgets down with no end in sight

6. Differing models
• E-book general and subject collections,
e.g., EBSCO, Project Muse
• Online only and downloadable
• E-textbooks: commercial or open
textbooks

7. Nomenclature
• E-books: individual titles and collections
• E-textbooks: a type of e-book published by a textbook
publisher—can be commercial or open access
• Open educational resources (OERs): open textbooks, test
questions, study guides, images, audio and video in digital or
non-digital formats that can be used by students, teachers and
researchers with the explicit right to reuse, redistribute and
adapt or “remix” materials
• Open textbooks: a type of OER
• Open textbook repository: a collection of open textbooks and
other OERs

8. ● Impact unclear: no counts of those
available, who and how many in use
● Some information on satisfaction and
impact on grades
● Publisher response
State of Open E-Textbooks

9. Open texts: gratis or libre?
• “Free as in beer:” zero price (aka “gratis”);
free to use
• “Free as in speech:” little or no restriction
(aka “libre”); provides more rights than
gratis: to redistribute, to change, to add

10. • University-wide task force
• Academic and Career Support Services
• Withdrawal triggers
• Promote a reduction in student textbook
expenses through faculty adoption of open
access textbooks
Student Success Forum

11. ● Library materials acquisitions
● Library student employment
● Information literacy
● Circulation statistics
● Use of the building
● Student satisfaction
● Trigger events
Retention Efforts and the
Library

12. ● Joined liaisons to visit each department
● Present scenario of textbook costs
● Review existing library and campus
services
● Present information on available open
access texts
● Follow-up with a link to a research guide
Departmental Visits

13. • Why doesn’t the library buy textbooks?
• New philosophy of collection development
• Development of evaluation criteria
New Service Needs

14. Reserves Statistics

15. ● Faculty reticence: no support to write
including credit for promotion and
tenure, little time to select
● Difficulty finding suitable texts at all levels
in all subjects
● Ease of use
● Lack of standards and best practices
Barriers to Adoption

16. ● Faculty survey of interest
● Identifying adoption rates
● Faculty satisfaction
● Student satisfaction
● Coordination of bookstore data and SIS
Assessment Plans

17. ● Continuing to encourage faculty to provide
textbooks to library
● Evaluate impact of library purchased textbooks
● Establish role for library in bookstore contact
negotiation
● Advocate as librarian liaisons
● Advocate as members of the university
● State-wide advocacy
● Large collections of monographs and edited
volumes
● National participation
Future Programs and Librarian
Advocacy

18. References:
http://loyno.edu/~gallaway/openaccess/references.pdf
Further Reading
Research Guides:
http://researchguides.loyno.edu/opentextbooks
http://researchguides.loyno.edu/openaccess

19. Further Reading
• Gallaway, Teri Oaks; Hobbs, James B. "Open
access for student success." in Enhancing
Teaching and Learning in the 21st-Century
Academic Library: Successful Innovations That
Make a Difference. Lanham, MD: Rowman &
Littlefield, 2015.
• New Media Consortium. “Horizon Report : 2015
Higher Education Edition.” Austin, TX: New
Media Consortium, 2015. Web. March 20,
2015. < http://www.nmc.org/publication/nmc-
horizon-report-2015-higher-education-edition/>

20. Questions
gallaway@loyno.edu
hobbs@loyno.edu