{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.02982444473999202, 'fraction_numerical': 0.01589307088708605, 'mean_word_length': 5.123167752442996, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 1, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Textbooks in Academic Libraries

ABSTRACT In response to the rising costs of course materials, some academic libraries are evaluating and adjusting the ways in which they provide access to textbooks in all formats. Some popular initiatives include cultivating and promoting print textbook reserve collections, the acquisition of ebooks and etextbooks as alternatives to print, and Open Educational Resources (OERs). This column highlights initiatives at a variety of academic libraries designed to help mitigate the cost of course materials for students. Incorporating interviews and studies from the literature, projects at institutions such as North Carolina State University, George Mason University, and East Carolina University are highlighted, including some discussion of the challenges and benefits of each project.


Introduction
The costs of textbooks and course materials are rising at an unsustainable rate. According to the College Board, in 2015 the average cost of books and materials at a 4year institution was $1,298 (College Board, 2015), up from $1,225 in 2014 (College Board, 2014). While a $73 difference may not seem a significant increase in terms of dollars, it represents a nearly 6% rise in the cost of books and materials per year. In fact, a report by the United States Government Accountability Office found that new textbook prices increased by a total of 82% between 2002 and 2012, and tuition and fees increased by 89%, whereas overall consumer prices grew by only 28% during the same time period (U.S. Government Accountability Office, 2013).
With the costs of tuition, room and board, course materials, and other expenses growing at more than three times the rate of inflation, it is no surprise that some college students seek to save money where they can. In a disheartening trend, many students are opting to forgo the purchase of their textbooks as a cost-saving measure, a choice that can impact both class performance and final grades. According to a 2013 Student Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) survey of more than 2,000 students at more than 150 academic institutions, "65% of students said that they had decided against buying a textbook because it was too expensive" (Senack, 2014). Further, the survey found that 94% of students who opted not to purchase a textbook were concerned that doing so would hurt their grade in their course (Senack, 2014). In lieu of purchasing the course materials required for their CONTACT  classes, students seek alternative options for access to their textbooks, including borrowing from or sharing with a classmate, renting access to a textbook for a semester, relying on library-owned copies and interlibrary loan, or simply going without.
In an effort to support patron needs and reduce outof-pocket costs for students, many academic libraries are exploring the ways in which they can provide access to textbooks and course-adopted texts at little to no cost to the students themselves. This column highlights projects at a number of academic institutions designed to mitigate the cost of textbooks, including initiatives such as print reserve collections, the acquisition and promotion of library-owned ebooks and etextbooks as alternatives to the print, and a growing support of Open Educational Resources (OERs).

Print textbook reserves
The acquisition of print textbooks has long been a point of contention in academic libraries. Many institutions' collection development policies specifically prohibit, or at least discourage, the purchase of textbooks-primarily due to the high cost of the texts and the frequency with which they are updated and need to be replaced. However, with the costs of textbooks on a never-ending rise, demand for access to textbooks remains high among students. In response, some institutions are actively acquiring print textbooks to place on reserve in hopes of alleviating some of the financial burden that course materials place on student budgets.
In 2009, with an eye toward addressing student concerns about access to textbooks, George Mason University (GMU) Libraries analyzed its interlibrary loan (ILL) statistics to determine how many textbooks their patrons were borrowing from other institutions. Their analysis revealed "that 90% of the 50 most-borrowed titles were information technology (IT) and engineering textbooks" (Gibbs & Bowdoin, 2014). Unfortunately for student borrowers, most institutions will only lend a resource for a limited time, and often renewals are not permitted. Borrowing another copy of the required textbook from another institution cannot be guaranteed, and consequently, students who borrow their textbooks through ILL are often left without the required texts halfway through the semester.
Armed with this knowledge, the GMU Libraries established a textbook reserve pilot project, dubbed TextSelect, the primary goals of which were to provide access to high-demand engineering textbooks and subsequently reduce the requests for those textbooks through ILL. Before purchasing any new textbooks, though, the GMU Libraries first investigated its existing collections to see how many of the textbook titles they already owned and then placed those titles on reserve. "By putting them on reserve, we were making the resources we already owned available to more people, " explains Jessica Bowdoin, head of access services at the GMU Libraries (J. Bowdoin and M. Kelly, personal communication, May 13, 2016). In 2012, the program was expanded to include additional subject areas, focusing on classes whose students represented the greatest retention risk, freshmen and transfer students (Gibbs & Bowdoin, 2014). The TextSelect program has continued to grow both in size and popularity since that time. According to Madeline Kelly, head of collection development, at this point the textbook purchases equate to about 3% of the GMU Libraries' normal monographic expenditures. However, the textbooks are purchased out of a separate fund designated solely for that purpose (J. Bowdoin and M. Kelly, personal communication, May 13, 2016).
The number of textbooks GMU purchases varies from semester to semester, but on average they buy about 400 new titles each year and keep about 1,400 titles on reserve throughout the year. The textbooks are housed on the Reserve shelves and circulate for 2 hours. Unfortunately, says Bowdoin, every semester there is a student that tries to game the system and keep the textbook for the duration of the term. Consequently, the reserve textbooks have a much higher replacement cost, and students are billed after only 24 hours. If the textbook is not returned at that point, the Libraries reach out to the GMU Office of Academic Integrity for assistance. Bowdoin indicates that this combination of policies has proven to be very successful in discouraging abuse of the reserves (J. Bowdoin and M. Kelly, personal communication, May 13, 2016).
It is interesting to note that, while library textbook acquisitions are sometimes viewed as competition for university bookstores, the campus bookstore at GMU played a key role in the implementation and success of the TextSelect program, both by donating seed money to kick off the pilot project and by selling the textbooks to the library. Says Bowdoin, "The bookstore is invested in making this work. They see themselves as partners in getting course materials for the students" (Gibbs & Bowdoin, 2014). Further, they have found that the TextSelect program has, somewhat counterintuitively, actually boosted sales in the bookstore, as more students opt to purchase a personal copy once they have used the library-owned copy.
TextSelect is marketed by subject liaisons as they reach out to their departments and also included in campus newsletters, but in actuality the GMU Libraries have not had to do much to publicize the service. "Students expect to find the textbooks in the library anyway. Now the program has been going on long enough that they have had successful experiences and come looking for textbooks specifically, " says Bowdoin (Gibbs & Bowdoin, 2014). One unanticipated but positive side effect is that while TextSelect was the name used to market the textbook reserve program, faculty and students have begun to refer to all reserves as TextSelect.
A similar initiative has been in place at North Carolina State University (NCSU) since 2009. Prompted by a student-led proposal to the University Library Committee, the NCSU Libraries Textbook program is viewed as a way to offset the burden of rising textbook costs for students (Vaughn, 2009). For the Textbook program, the Libraries acquire one copy of every required textbook for every course offered in the Fall and Spring semesters, which are placed on reserve and circulate in-building for 2 hours. In the first year of the program, NCSU purchased approximately 1,200 textbooks. Since then, an average of 700 new textbooks are purchased each fiscal year, says Hilary Davis, head of collection management at NCSU (H. Davis, personal communication, June 1, 2016).
The Textbook program is funded out of the NCSU Libraries' collections budget, which is supported by stateappropriated funds. According to Davis, the Libraries spend between $30,000 and $40,000 per fiscal year on the textbooks, depending upon how many new textbooks are adopted and how many need to be replaced. This represents less than 1% of the funds allocated to monographic acquisitions annually, although more money was spent in the first year when the program was seeded. "Reallocation of funds from general acquisitions is necessary, but the value this brings to our students is substantial. We wanted to try to reduce the burden of rising textbook costs on our student population, " explains Davis (H. Davis, personal communication, June 1, 2016). The textbooks are both identified and sourced as part of the course textbook adoption process managed by the NCSU Bookstores. As at GMU, the campus bookstores have been very willing to collaborate with the Libraries to maintain the program over the years, and Davis indicates that they continue to be integral partners in the program.
The Libraries' practice has been to keep titles from the current semester, as well as titles from the two prior semesters, on the Reserves shelving since some textbooks get readopted by faculty members each time they teach a course. Over the summer, they conduct a more systematic refresh of the collection, at which time textbooks that haven't been adopted in the prior three semesters get rotated back into the general collection. The space the Textbook collection occupies is considerable, roughly 80% of the course reserves space-estimated at 530 linear feet across two main libraries and three branch libraries.
This program has been welcomed by the student population, and with over 47,000 circulations per year across the collection, it receives heavy use. In a 2012 article in Technician, the NCSU student newspaper, a student states, "The reserves at the library are very helpful. Sometimes I don't even purchase my textbook because it's cheaper to use it through the reserves" (Thompson, 2012). However, the student goes on to mention that there are drawbacks to the program, saying "The reserves has its cons and pros, especially with there only being one book available to check out for that one class. So, at times you have to wait for other students to return the textbook" (Thompson, 2012). To address this concern, NCSU purchases additional copies of high-use textbooks to mitigate the need for students to wait for an available copy. At this point, NCSU does not yet have data on how much money the Textbook Program has saved students, but it is one that they are exploring. Overall, the steady and significant usage of this collection has proven that it is valuable to continue, says Davis (H. Davis, personal communication, June 1, 2016).
Despite the success of and positive response to programs like those at GMU and NCSU, there are those who contend that the time has come to put an end to print textbook reserves, regardless of their popularity. Citing the fact that only one student can access a reserve textbook at a time, as well as the high cost of building and maintaining print textbook reserve collections, Donald A. Barclay argues in a June 2015 article in College & Research Libraries News that "textbook reserve systems impose an unsustainable, never-ending drain on library budgets" (Barclay, 2015). In favor of eliminating print textbook reserves altogether, Barclay goes on to suggest alternatives such as the use of ebooks and online journals available via the library, open access scholarly articles, open educational resources, and library-based publishing initiatives.

Etextbooks and ebooks
Due to features such as 24-hour accessibility and the fact that online resources can be used by multiple students and class sections at one time, etextbooks and ebooks are an increasingly popular alternative to print textbooks. The 2013 Student PIRG survey found that there was significant student interest in free, online textbooks. In fact, "82% of students felt they would do SIGNIFICANTLY BETTER in a course if the textbook was available free online and buying a hard copy was optional" (Senack, 2014). In response to this growing demand from students, libraries are actively expanding the ways in which they both promote and provide access to ebooks and electronic course materials, specifically marketing these resources to both faculty and students as alternatives to the purchase of print.
One such example is a study published in Serials Review earlier this year. Carr, Cardin, and Shouse (2016) explored the effectiveness of acquiring online versions of course-adopted texts (CATs) at East Carolina University (ECU). Rather than focusing on the electronic versions of print textbooks, the ECU project focused more on the acquisition of CATs that were not identified as textbooks, such as scholarly monographs and nonscholarly books assigned as class readings. "In contrast to textbooks, scholarly monographs and nonscholarly books constitute categories of CATs that are often available for acquisition by libraries in ebook form with unlimited concurrent use permission" (Carr et al., 2016).
Working off a list supplied by the university bookstore, the ECU Libraries worked to identify the CATs to which the Libraries already provided unlimited concurrent access or to which unlimited concurrent user access could be acquired on one of ECU's three preferred ebook platforms-Ebook Library (EBL), ebrary, or EBSCOhost. Once a list of prospective titles was identified, the Libraries contacted the professors teaching the courses using those CATs to determine whether or not the professor would be willing to promote the online access to their students. Ultimately, ECU made available 73 CATs for use by 1,378 students in 107 course sections; 42 of those CATs were already owned by the Libraries, and another 31 were acquired specifically for this project. The Libraries allocated $3,000 to the purchase of the CATs, making sure that "the funds used for the acquisition of CATs were taken from allocations in support of demanddriven acquisition models rather than from subject funds for the firm ordering of books" (Carr et al., 2016).
According to Carr et al. (2016), response from the faculty at ECU was generally positive, and several responded with messages of encouragement and approval. Those faculty who objected to the use of the online CATs cited a variety of reasons, including, but not limited to, concerns about troubleshooting access problems, a negative impact on author royalties, and the absence of content in the online version that is included with the print. A student survey sent out at the end of the project indicated that 70.8% of the respondents relied solely on the library's online access to the CAT, and 62.5% of the students were highly satisfied with that online access. Perhaps, though, the most impressive numbers to come out of ECU's analysis of the CAT project were the calculations on student savings. By obtaining pricing for both the new and used versions of the CATs and multiplying those prices by the percentage of survey respondents who used the Libraries' online access, the estimated student savings was calculated as being between $34,292 and $45,994 (Carr et al., 2016).
While the ECU Libraries experimented with access to CATs on their own, other groups are exploring access to etextbooks on a larger scale across multiple institutions. In 2012 and 2013, Internet2 and EDUCAUSE jointly organized a series of etextbook pilot programs. Partnering with 23 participating academic institutions, including schools such as the University of South Florida, the University at Buffalo, Cornell University, and the University of Kentucky, the Fall 2012 pilot made digital versions of textbooks from McGraw-Hill available to more than 5,000 students and faculty across all 23 institutions (Grajek, 2013). At several of the participating institutions, the pilot was led by the campus libraries, the University of South Florida (USF) being one example. As Monica Metz-Wiseman, coordinator of electronic collections at the USF Libraries explains, [L]ibrarians have a unique set of competencies and skills which are necessary to successfully implement an etextbook pilot. Librarians are no stranger to innovative technologies, accessibility issues, the publishing industry, budgets, support issues, vendor negotiations, licensing, working with faculty and students, or dealing with bibliographic information. (Metz-Wiseman, 2014) The institutional fees for the pilot were divided into two tiers and calculated based upon the number of students and faculty projected to participate-the lower tier accommodated 800 students for $20,000 and the higher tier accommodated 1,600 students at $35,000 (Metz-Wiseman, 2014). Once the institution paid the flat fee based upon the selected tier, the participating faculty and students were able to access the textbooks at no cost to themselves. "There was some financial risk involved in deciding whether to participate in the pilot at Tier I or Tier II, as faculty had to be both willing to participate in the pilot and able to adopt an e-textbook that was included in the pilot" (Metz-Wiseman, 2014).
With 5,000 students and faculty participating, the estimated average cost savings was $138 per student overall. Actual cost savings varied from institution to institution, depending upon the number of students involved in the pilot and the actual cost of the textbooks. It was found that one institution had a negative net savings, paying more for the pilot than it would have cost to purchase the textbooks. In addition, an unknown number of students opted to purchase the print textbooks, which reduced overall savings (Grajek, 2013).
The McGraw-Hill etextbook content was made available to the students via Courseload, an etextbook platform that enables students and faculty to add bookmarks, highlights, notes, and annotations to the text (Grajek, 2013). Faculty and students in every course viewed the etextbooks, and 96% of students used at least one of the highlighting or annotating features of the Courseload platform (Grajek, 2013). Responses to the etextbooks by the students and faculty participating in the pilot were mixed. Based upon their responses to a baseline survey, 32% of student participants were classified as feeling negatively toward the etextbooks, 32% as neutral, and the remaining 36% as positive. The numbers for faculty were slightly more skewed, with 44% classified as supportive, 33% as critical, and 22% neutral (Grajek, 2013). Perhaps not surprisingly, the study found that the "[i]nstructors' adoption of e-textbooks is a key influencer of students' experiences. In courses where faculty engaged with the e-textbooks, more students reported positive learning outcomes" (Grajek, 2013).
Implementing a pilot of this kind across that many academic institutions was not without challenges. "Selecting faculty to participate in the pilot was moderately challenging. Only those teaching with McGraw-Hill textbooks were eligible, which limited recruitment options" (Grajek, 2013). Another drawback to the structure of the program was that access to the etextbooks expired at the end of the pilot; students and faculty were not able to access the text or their highlights or notes after the pilot ended. Some faculty "expressed a lack of motivation to invest time in a pilot that they would lose access to after the pilot's end" (Grajek, 2013).
It is important to note, though, that not all commercial ebooks and etextbooks are ideal for use as replacements for the print. As Abby Clobridge points out in a 2015 article for Online Searcher, [d]igital textbook options may be cheaper than print versions, but often publishers weigh down the digital versions with restrictions on how much-if anything-can be printed, the number of devices that can access a particular title, and licenses that expire within a few months. (Clobridge, 2015) The digital rights management restrictions within an ebook platform may deter both faculty and students from using the electronic version in place of the print.

Open Educational Resources
"Despite good intentions, when academic librarians buy textbooks for students they support a dysfunctional textbook industry that has a captive market of students and faculty alike" (Allen, Bell, & Billings, 2014), a statement that can be equally true for both print and electronic texts. To address issues such as digital rights management and the costs associated with purchasing both print and electronic textbooks, an increasing number of libraries are looking toward Open Educational Resources (OERs) as alternatives. Open Educational Resource is a broad term, encompassing a wide variety of open access, peerreviewed, freely available educational resources for use in the classroom. One of the more well-known uses of OERs in an academic setting is Tidewater Community College's textbook-free degree program, known as the Zero Degree, or Z-Degree, program, through which students can earn an Associate of Science in Business Administration entirely using OERs, without purchasing a single textbook (http://tcc.edu/academics/degrees/textbook-free).
A number of repositories make a wide variety of open educational content freely available. Some examples include Cool4Ed, the California Open Online Library for Education; the Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources, which has more than 250 community college members; and Open College Textbooks, affiliated with the Center for Open Education at the University of Minnesota. The content within these repositories is in most cases produced by the faculty at the institutions the repository serves. As the faculty, and in some cases students, work to produce the content for their courses, libraries and librarians can play a key role in the production, adoption, and promotion of OERs, assisting with funding, research, copyright, and publishing options.
Established in 2014, the Alt-Textbook program at the North Carolina State University (NCSU) Libraries offers grants ranging between $500 and $2,000 "to help faculty pursue innovative uses of technology and information resources that can replace pricey traditional textbooks" (NCSU Libraries Offering Grants to Help Faculty Develop Free or Low-cost Open Textbook Alternatives, 2014). In the 2 years that NCSU has run the Alt-Textbook program, they have awarded a total of 19 grants. Initially funded by a $15,000 grant from the NCSU Foundation, the project has been sustained with funds from the NCSU Libraries. "Over our 2 years we have spent around $25,000 and saved students more than $250,000, " says Will Cross, director of copyright and digital scholarship at NCSU (W. Cross, personal communication, May 16, 2016). As part of the program, librarians are available to collaborate and to share expertise in copyright, licensing, open access, course management software and tools, electronic reserves, subject matter content, and multimedia resources.
The OERs the Alt-Textbook initiative has helped to fund are not necessarily traditional or typical textbooksprojects range from a set of short videos created by undergraduate students to supplement the Organic Chemistry Laboratories to a graduate-level course on educational apps done entirely in GitHub. Thus far, the projects have been left in their native environments, and students access them as is appropriate for their format. For example, the BIT OER, a student-driven biotechnology open educational resource, is made available and searchable on a freestanding website (http://biotech.ncsu.edu/projects). Cross indicates that this summer NCSU will be designing a centralized site that will collect, store, and showcase the projects, hopefully in time for fall 2016(W. Cross, personal communication, May 16, 2016). An explicit requirement of NCSU's Alt-Textbook grants is that the OER completely replace any commercial textbook, so the 19 courses supported by the program are exclusively using the OER they are designing. Cross is hopeful that other classes and other institutions will also use the resources that this project is producing (W. Cross, personal communication, May 16, 2016).
The student response to the Alt-Textbook Project has been very positive. "The cost savings are extremely important, " says Cross, and students have let us know that reducing the cost of textbooks has freed them to try new things, travel (to see family back home-especially important for international students-or to a conference, etc.), or just graduate with less debt and thus have more options to go into public service or entrepreneurial work. (W. Cross, personal communication, May 16, 2016) In addition to the cost savings, Cross indicates that both students and faculty have been enthusiastic about the new types of learning made by possible by the alt-texts, as student-driven projects are natural avenues for empowered, active learning. In one example, the Student-Made Audiovisuals Reinforcing Techniques (S.M.A.R.T.) Lab project, students conceptualized the project, used social media to brainstorm the characteristics of the videos, and made the videos themselves. Cross indicates that the professor's assessment of the project revealed measurable improvements in student learning (W. Cross, personal communication, May 16, 2016).
The librarians at NCSU have been closely integrated into the Alt-Textbook project from the start. Cross explains, We have a committee of librarians who review proposals and each awardee is assigned a library liaison that works to make sure the awardee has the support she needs in terms of finding materials, negotiating timelines, and navigating the administrative issues like working with state funds. (W. Cross, personal communication, May 16, 2016) In addition, the Alt-Textbook team deliberately includes librarians with specific areas of expertise that will likely be useful as the alt-texts are designed. For example, as the Libraries' copyright expert, Cross regularly works with awardees to license content, locate open or Creative Commons licensed materials, or address the issue of fair use. Similarly, the instructional designer, digital librarian, access and delivery librarian all work to make sure course design, web materials, and content management system/e-reserve issues are addressed.
One of the great benefits of open educational materials is that they can be more easily updated than commercial print and electronic textbooks, and as they are used by more people, they are updated more often, sometimes with new areas of content added (W. Cross, personal communication, May 16, 2016). Cross does expect that as part of the Alt-Textbooks project the individual instructors will continue updating their materials; many of the projects have integrated the creation of new and updated content into the class as part of actual learning process.
When asked to highlight one of the most successful Alt-Textbook projects, Cross had a hard time deciding, listing examples such as an alt-text for a class on Diversity in Parks, Recreation, & Tourism Management, for which no commercial textbook was even available, and a course that uses clips from popular films to demonstrate and build empathy. "It has been amazing to see so many alt-texts that meet instructors where they want to teach, rather than forcing a one-size-fits-all (and publisherapproved) source onto faculty, " says Cross (W. Cross, personal communication, May 16, 2016). Eventually, he settled on a Veterinary Medicine project from this year's proposals that is partnering with the NCSU Libraries' Makerspace to 3-D print bones for an anatomy class. "It's such a good example of what makes OERs so effective: they open the door to new voices and new partners to make learning more personalized and immediate, " explains Cross (W. Cross, personal communication, May 16, 2016).

Conclusion
With the cost of textbooks rising unsustainably, academic institutions and libraries are searching for ways to mitigate the costs of course materials. The projects highlighted here demonstrate a myriad of tactics for providing access to educational materials at no cost to the student. Whether it is print textbook reserves, acquisition of ebooks and etextbooks as alternatives to the print, or the creation of freely available Open Educational Resources, the end goal remains the same: to make course materials, and ultimately an education, more affordable. By cooperating with on campus partners such as the campus bookstore, gaining faculty buy-in, and promoting new initiatives within the academic community, libraries are seeing success in these programs. While perhaps not quite fully there yet, libraries and the institutions they serve are making real progress on viable alternatives that will hopefully yield both flexible content and sustainable pricing models.