This recipe outlines a program designed to provide a low-barrier first step introducing faculty to textbook affordability using library collections. By comparing bookstore adoption information with library collections and notifying faculty of unlimited user ebooks, this program helps courses approach zero textbook costs without requiring much change from the faculty

Kirschner, Jessica

MIller, Hillary

English

VCU Scholars Compass

Virginia Commonwealth University VCU Scholars Compass VCU Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications VCU Libraries 2021 The Perfect Mix: Leveraging Library Collections and Bookstore Partnerships for Textbook Affordability Jessica Kirschner Virginia Commonwealth University, kirschnerj2@vcu.edu Hillary MIller Virginia Commonwealth University, hmiller5@vcu.edu Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/libraries_pubs  Part of the Scholarly Communication Commons Downloaded from https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/libraries_pubs/72 This Book Chapter is brought to you for free and open access by the VCU Libraries at VCU Scholars Compass. It has been accepted for inclusion in VCU Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications by an authorized administrator of VCU Scholars Compass. For more information, please contact libcompass@vcu.edu. 60Section II. Open Educational Resources Kirschner and MillerThe Perfect Mix:Leveraging Library Collections and Bookstore Partnerships for Textbook AffordabilityJessica Kirschner, Open Educational Resources Librarian, Virginia Commonwealth University, kirschnerj2@vcu.eduHillary Miller, Scholarly Communications Librarian, Virginia Commonwealth University, hmiller5@vcu.eduNUTRITION INFORMATIONAcademic libraries play an important role in supporting successful research and teach-ing at their parent institutions by ensuring access to journals, books, and other media. This focus on access and student success often also includes providing course materi-als through reserves and, more recently, has expanded at many institutions to include textbook affordability initiatives. These initiatives go by a variety of names, often fo-cusing on open education and open educa-tional resources (OER), and involve a variety of stakeholders from the library and around the institution. As most librarians working on such initiatives will share, it’s not always easy to gain faculty buy-in for the change to open and affordable course materials. This recipe outlines a program designed to provide a low-barrier first step introducing faculty to textbook affordability using library collections. By comparing bookstore adop-tion information with library collections and notifying faculty of unlimited user ebooks, this program helps courses approach zero textbook costs without requiring much change from the faculty.PROJECT OUTCOMES• Increase textbook-related cost avoid-ance for students.• Lower barriers to decreasing student textbook costs by requiring little to no change to current faculty practices.• Provide a low-barrier first step introduc-ing faculty to textbook affordability as a way to promote longer-term, increased engagement.• Increase awareness and usage of library collections by promoting their usage as course materials.• Increase faculty awareness of library services and collections and encourage future interaction.NUMBER SERVEDNumber served will depend on an institu-tion’s collection policies (e.g., if textbooks are acquired), size of school, and disciplines.For VCU, which has approximately 30,000 students across all disciplines, including a medical campus, we received approximately 2,300 sections/titles from the bookstore in Spring 2020. From these, we found approxi-mately• 550 unique titles (including books, ac-cess codes, and supplementary material)• 225 books owned in print• 150 available as ebooks• 100 available as unlimited user ebooksUsing the 100 ebooks, we notified approxi-mately 70 professors teaching 80 courses and 90 sections. If all 3,000 students (duplicated headcount) used these titles instead of buy-ing a new copy, their cost avoidance would be approximately $320,000.COOKING TIMEBeginning an program that compares book-store adoptions to library collections will re-quire a lot of set-up time. Each institution will need some trial and error to determine how to best clean data, compare against collec-tions, and email. However, the initial setup will pay off in subsequent semesters of implemen-tation, which can proceed more smoothly.With that disclaimer, plan for the following:• Reach out to the bookstore shortly after textbook adoption deadlines to obtain adoption information.• Set aside approximately 1 week when a majority of time will be spent with the 61Section II. Open Educational ResourcesKirschner and Millerdata cleaning and comparison process. In the first cycle, it may take 2–3 weeks.• Email faculty as early as possible to al-low maximum time to adjust bookstore reporting and notify students. Notify faculty for spring before the end of the fall semester and vice versa, if possible.DIETARY GUIDELINESComparing bookstore adoptions lists to library collections can act as an important part of any textbook affordability initiative. At VCU, it accounts for the majority of the “affordable” half of our Open and Affordable Course Content Initiative. Actively notify-ing faculty of ebooks introduces them to an initiative they might not have otherwise been aware of. This project also lowers the barrier to engagement with textbook affordability while still serving the goal of reducing text-book costs for students as much as possible.The program applies to a subset of classes: those using scholarly or trade works rather than traditional textbooks. This reach may vary depending on an institution’s collection guidelines.INGREDIENTS & EQUIPMENT• Bookstore partner(s)• List of textbook adoptions from the bookstore• Access to information on the library’s collections, including information on the number of users for ebooks• Librarians to perform and share out the analysis• Access to course catalog or schedule with information on who is teaching which classes for upcoming semesters• University directory for faculty email addressesPREPARATION• Prepare to cook: Cultivating book-store relationships. Before starting, it’s important to develop a good rela-tionship with the campus store. These stores often consider themselves at the forefront of textbook affordability and are often happy to support the library’s efforts (Bell, 2017). Even third-party-run stores—VCU uses Barnes and Noble—are often open to collaboration. Set up a meeting with the bookstore manager and identify shared values around af-fordability and student access to course materials. Share your interest in obtain-ing a list of adoptions, perhaps set-ting up a timeline for the process built around your institution’s reporting dead-lines. Offer to share back titles you have identified in library collections, as these can help the bookstore more accurately order the right number of books.• Gather ingredients: Obtaining a list of adoptions. Work with the bookstore to obtain a list of adoptions from the current semester. Attempt to get the list as close to the adoption reporting deadline—usually prior to registration—which will allow time for the subsequent steps before the start of the semester.COOKING METHOD1. Mise en place: Clean bookstore data. Begin by cleaning the data. This will reduce the number of books to compare against the library collection. If the data is shared as a spreadsheet, both Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets allow for easy searching and duplicate removal, al-though other tools are also available.To clean the data, first remove duplicate titles using ISBN. Then, depending on your collection guidelines, review the list to remove – traditional textbooks (identify by publisher, e.g., Cengage, Pearson) – custom items (usually include “cus-tom” in the title) – items with access codes (search for “access code” or certain publishers or products, e.g., Top Hat or Mindtap) – items with media/supplementary materials (e.g., CD, DVD, Kits) – items that are looseleaf (usually include some version of “looseleaf” in the title) – non-book materials (e.g., Clickers)Tip: One way to quickly identify items to remove is to create additional columns for each of these options and to evaluate each row for that category (see figure 1). In Excel, use variations on the formula=IF(SUMPRODUCT(--ISNUMBER(SEARCH ({“>CUSTOM<”},F2)))>0, “y”, “n”)Those rows that have “n” labels in all col-umns are those to evaluate in Step 2.62Section II. Open Educational Resources Kirschner and MillerFigure 1. Sample spreadsheet for cleaning dataThis figure is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License2. Run list of current adoptions against library catalog. Using the list of cleaned data, search for each title in the catalog. Note which items are owned as print versus ebooks and which ebooks have unlimited users. Collect permalinks, if pos-sible, for all ebooks. Figure 2 provides an example of a completed comparison.Tip: first identify the full title and specific edition using an ISBN search service (like https://isbnsearch.org/) as the information from bookstore lists may be incomplete or unclear.3. Generate a master list of sections and books. Compare the list of unlimited user ebooks identified in step 2 against the original list from the bookstore to gener-ate a list of all course sections which use each ebook. Then, review the course cata-log to identify who teaches each section on this list, and go over the school direc-tory to collect email addresses for those professors.4. Email faculty. Using the master list generated in step 3, email faculty letting them know they are assigning a book(s) available through the library, sending the permalink, and asking them to share with their students. A sample email is provided in the appendix.Tip: working with mail merge makes the emailing process a lot quicker! However, be careful when notifying faculty about more than one book or more than one class. You may have to create separate mail merges by the number of notifica-tions or create custom emails for these unique circumstances.5. Taste-testing: Track faculty sharing of information. In the email to faculty, ask them to share back whether they have reported the textbook to students and how they did so. Faculty may change their request to the bookstore (for example, asking the bookstore to add a note that the text is available for free through the library) or share the link to the ebook version with students via the syllabus, LMS, or email. Use the infor-Figure 2. Sample comparison between bookstore adoptions and VCU collections. In the #users column, -1 stands for unlimited users.This figure is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License63Section II. Open Educational ResourcesKirschner and Millermation provided to generate a more accurate cost avoidance count for these courses’ textbooks.ALLERGY WARNINGS• The types of materials identified through the initiative will vary depend-ing on an institution’s collection guide-lines. For VCU, these course materials will be scholarly and trade works but not traditional textbooks. If your institution collects textbooks, eliminate the re-moval of traditional textbooks from the list in step 1.• It’s best to get adoption lists as soon as possible after the reporting deadline so you can reach out to faculty in time for them to take action. However, you might find that many adoptions have not yet been reported by the deadline. Book-store managers can help determine the best time to share the list for your initial efforts. They often have an idea of how many adoptions they will receive in total, and you can coordinate with them for an updated adoption list from them once they’re closer to a full report for a second round of searching and notifying faculty.• When evaluating ebooks, you may also want to consider the type of owner-ship. Books the library owns perpetu-ally are great to share because faculty can use them in subsequent semesters without worry. However, books avail-able through subscription always have the possibility of disappearing between semesters. Some subscriptions may also auto-update when a new edition is released, so the institution loses access to past editions. If sharing subscription copies with faculty, consider including a disclaimer reminding faculty to check the link if used in a subsequent semes-ter. This is also good practice as some services occasionally change links even when the book is still available.CLEAN-UPThe taste-testing step—asking faculty to report how they share the ebook availability with students—is a good way to assess the initiative. There is no guarantee that faculty will read the email you send, so asking for this reporting is an additional action step for them to engage with the content and assess the actual impact.In spring 2020, we received responses from ap-proximately 30 percent of the faculty that we notified. Some responses were more engaged than others, but all responses were positive. Here are some sample responses we received:• “Thank you so much for sharing this electronic resource! I will email my stu-dents by the end of the week to ensure they know they have free access to these 2 textbooks. It is wonderful we can save them some money on books.”• “Thanks so much for letting me know! This will be a huge weight off the stu-dents!”• “Wonderful, this is fantastic, thank you! I’m very appreciative to you for emailing me and helping out students in this way.”• “I’m delighted to learn, this is outstand-ing, thank you for your proactivity.”However, such responses do not capture the full impact of the initiative. Some fac-ulty may have seen the email and shared the information with students but chosen not to respond. Others may have taken the information and continued to use it in future semesters, extending the impact. Since this program is based on bookstore data, if a professor opts not to report the free ebook to the bookstore in a subsequent semester, we will not be aware of that usage. We are cur-rently evaluating the possibility of follow-ups to faculty previously notified, weighing the desire to track impact with the unwillingness to overwhelm inboxes or demand too much action for an initiative for which faculty did not instigate their involvement.We’ve also started to see other positive im-pacts. Faculty have begun reaching out to the librarian who sent out the email in subse-quent semesters, asking about the possibil-ity of purchasing different ebooks for their courses. This exciting development seems to emphasize the underlying assumption that reducing initiative barriers will increase awareness and engagement with faculty in the future.CHEF’S NOTESIf the process and unknown time commit-ment seem overwhelming, start on a smaller scale. Consider identifying the top enrollment courses or a department, like history or politi-64Section II. Open Educational Resources Kirschner and Millercal science, which may have high overlap with library resources. Use this to help estimate the time commitment and evaluate expanding the program against staffing requirements.In our first round, we looked up books using our discovery layer. However, we’re explor-ing other options for making the process easier. For example, in Alma, you can upload lists using the “sets” function. However, this process requires some additional checking from cleaned lists for books whose print ISBN does not appear in the MARC record of the ebook version. There is also the possibility of working with vendors, like EBSCO or GOBI, to outsource the searching of library collections.If you decide to track books that your library has in its print collections, consider notify-ing faculty that you have a book that can be placed in course reserves for student use. While this will not provide as much access as an unlimited user ebook, it can still increase access by some measure. You might also find that many print titles used as textbooks are missing from your collection and consider purchasing replacements as unlimited user ebooks when possible.APPENDIX: SAMPLE EMAIL TO FACULTYSubject: VCU Libraries ebook available for your courseDear Professor {{Last Name}},VCU Libraries has identified that a book(s) that you are currently assigning for your [semester] class(es) is available as an ebook(s) with unlimited users:{{Title}} by {{Author}} for use in {{Department}} {{Course}} {{Section}} available at {{Permalink}}Please note that while we believe this is the correct text and edition, please check before sharing with your students. Also, note that li-brary ebooks typically do not include supple-mental materials that may be required.What should I do with this ebook and link?We hope that you will share this link with your students so that they are aware there is a freely accessible version. Since costs prohib-it many students from purchasing books at the beginning of the semester or perhaps at all, sharing this resource can help ensure that all students have access to the text, increas-ing the potential for them to succeed in your class. More specifically, you can  Ask the bookstore to add a note along-side your book sharing it is available through the library or asking your stu-dents to talk to you before purchasing  Include the link in your syllabus  Include the link on Blackboard/the LMS, and/or  Email information to your studentsIf you have any questions, please let me or your liaison librarian, cc’d here.What does VCU Libraries need?VCU Libraries is happy to provide these re-sources to the VCU faculty without stipulations. However, we do ask that you report if you shared the ebook link with your students by either responding to this email letting us know how you shared it with your students.About this projectIn partnership with the VCU Bookstore, VCU Libraries has identified a number of assigned course texts that are available in the library collections as ebooks. Although purchasing traditional textbooks generally falls outside of our collection guidelines, we have many scholarly books that are assigned as course materials, and we are notifying faculty of their availability to provide another potential option for students. This is part of our broad-er efforts to support the use of open and affordable course content at VCU.Learning moreIf you’d like help with identifying other po-tential library resources that can be used as course materials, you can contact me or your liaison librarian, cc’d here, for assistance.Thank you,Jessica KirschnerOpen Educational Resources LibrarianADDITIONAL RESOURCESBell, Steven. 2017. What about the bookstore: Textbook affordability programs and the academic library-bookstore relationship. College & Research Libraries News 78(7). https://crln.acrl.org/index.php/crlnews/article/view/16700/18183

The Perfect Mix: Leveraging Library Collections and Bookstore Partnerships for Textbook Affordability

https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1076&context=libraries_pubs

The Perfect Mix: Leveraging Library Collections and Bookstore Partnerships for Textbook Affordability

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