Learn how Loyola University New Orleans librarians worked with teaching faculty to provide alternatives to purchasing expensive textbooks for students.

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