Sutton, S. C., & Chadwell, F. A. (2014). Open textbooks
at Oregon State University: A case study of new opportunities for academic
libraries and university presses. Journal
of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication, 2(4), 4.
Descriptive Summary:
In this article, Sutton and Chadwell (2014) evaluate how
open textbooks fit into the developing library publishing movement. Academic libraries have always dealt with
textbook issues. Students continually
ask the library to provide textbooks as prices continue to rise and many
students cannot afford to purchase them.
The idea of open textbooks is an emerging trend that the
larger Open Educational Resources (OER) supports. Many state governments are funding open
textbook publishing programs for higher education. There are important opportunities for
libraries to be involved in this movement.
It should be in the mission of the library to remove barriers to the
free flow of information in support of teaching and learning.
In general, the role of library publishing typically involves providing access to monographs, open access journals, technical reports, conference
proceedings, and electronic theses and dissertations in their institutional
repositories. In order to publish open textbooks, there is a need to
collaborate with faculty and often university presses. An extension of this
collaboration would be reaching out to other universities in order to maximize
the scope and impact of open textbook publishing. Publishing open textbooks is a potential area
for growth in the library field that can have a global impact.
Evaluation:
I work at an academic library and students always ask if we
have certain textbooks available in the library. In general, we do not have textbooks in the
library because we want to support the University bookstore and due to textbook editions changing so fast. I do see the
high price of textbooks as a problem for students, especially science majors,
whose average textbook cost can be way over $100.00.
I think that open textbook publishing is a great idea and I hope that
the movement continues to grow.
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