The Library’s Role in the Changing World of Textbooks: Where Do We Go From Here?

This presentation examines the library’s role as options proliferate regarding textbooks in higher education— due to the high cost of textbooks. It considers the prioritization of textbooks outside the university and the library, and it covers both the Ottenheimer Library’s (at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock—UALR) pilot project to purchase textbooks and the experience of two other libraries with purchasing textbooks, print and electronic. It looks at the growth of open educational resource (OER) textbooks and how they are presented to potential users. The author also discusses the results of three libraries with pilot projects to incentivize faculty to switch to OER textbooks and how these projects impacted the libraries