Abstract
Academic libraries have implemented various initiatives to help reduce the cost students pay for learning materials. Popular initiatives including promoting open educational resources (OER), inclusive access programs, and curriculum-based collection development. A recent survey conducted by Library Journal/EBSCO identified several barriers to faculty engagement with e-books in courses. This paper will discuss those barriers, as well as the efforts at two Louisiana universities, under the leadership of the statewide academic library consortium (LOUIS), to promote both OER and library-purchased e-books, and address challenges to faculty and student engagement with these materials. In addition to these, some libraries have implemented programs to purchase books assigned to courses as e-books and made them available to students free of charge. One such program has been in place at Louisiana State University (LSU) since 2014. This paper will describe that program, including its efforts to engage faculty members, as well as similar efforts at the University of New Orleans (UNO). Among the efforts to engage faculty is LSU’s “e-Textbooks for Faculty” portal; a website that enables faculty members to search for relevant e-books. A similar tool, created by EBSCO to serve a state consortium, will also be discussed. Finally, user testing was conducted to understand whether an existing library e-textbook product (EBSCO) sufficiently supported the course-reading workflow; this paper will discuss that testing as well as recommendations for platforms seeking to support this use case.
Getting E-Books into Courses: How Libraries Can Partner with Faculty to Ease the Textbook Affordability Crisis
Academic libraries have implemented various initiatives to help reduce the cost students pay for learning materials. Popular initiatives including promoting open educational resources (OER), inclusive access programs, and curriculum-based collection development. A recent survey conducted by Library Journal/EBSCO identified several barriers to faculty engagement with e-books in courses. This paper will discuss those barriers, as well as the efforts at two Louisiana universities, under the leadership of the statewide academic library consortium (LOUIS), to promote both OER and library-purchased e-books, and address challenges to faculty and student engagement with these materials. In addition to these, some libraries have implemented programs to purchase books assigned to courses as e-books and made them available to students free of charge. One such program has been in place at Louisiana State University (LSU) since 2014. This paper will describe that program, including its efforts to engage faculty members, as well as similar efforts at the University of New Orleans (UNO). Among the efforts to engage faculty is LSU’s “e-Textbooks for Faculty” portal; a website that enables faculty members to search for relevant e-books. A similar tool, created by EBSCO to serve a state consortium, will also be discussed. Finally, user testing was conducted to understand whether an existing library e-textbook product (EBSCO) sufficiently supported the course-reading workflow; this paper will discuss that testing as well as recommendations for platforms seeking to support this use case.