The Good, the Difficult, and the Dubious: the Present and Future of Library Textbook Affordability Initiatives By Stephanie Warden (Associate Director/Information Literacy Librarian, Jim Dan Hill Library, University of Wisconsin – Superior) <swarden1@uwsuper.edu> and Jennifer E. M. Cotton (University of Maryland, College Park Libraries) <jecotton@umd.edu> https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1018-431X and Theresa Carlson (Northern Arizona University, Cline Library) <Theresa.Carlson@nau.edu> and Brittany Blanchard (Northern Arizona University, Cline Library) <Brittany.Blanchard@nau.edu>
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extbook affordability has emerged as a significant concern for students pursuing higher education. The soaring costs of textbooks and course materials have become a significant barrier, limiting students’ access to essential resources. As a result, institutions and libraries have been exploring strategies to alleviate this financial burden, ensuring that students have equitable access to the educational materials they need. Approaches taken by libraries are varied but include providing access to textbooks through mechanisms like Course Reserves, facilitating lower cost alternatives through course packets and supporting the creation, adoption and curation of Open Educational Resources. In this issue, we explain our individual libraries’ approaches to textbook affordability and the impact these approaches have had. Our separate tactics have been shaped by our institutional context and resources. Before we “While discuss our individual approaches, challenges we want to take a moment to address some of the current challenges to and threats to textbook affordability initiatives on affordability a broader scale.
initiatives exist and can be difficult to overcome, libraries continue to evolve their approaches and adapt.”
One trend that hampers the ability of libraries to aid students in textbook affordability is what are generally referred to as “inclusive access” programs. Inclusive access, also known as automatic billing, is widely touted as a panacea for affordability problems. Courses that are enrolled in an inclusive access program have all of the course materials available to students through the learning management system (LMS) at the beginning of the semester, with the costs of the materials added to the student’s tuition charges, rather than requiring separate purchase. The advantages touted by advocates of these programs include all of the students having access to the materials from the beginning of class, easier purchasing, and increased market share, which allows publishers to lower prices.1
low-cost options like open educational resources (OERs), particularly in models where the costs of all required materials are averaged together across courses. These programs can also lead to disciplines with less expensive course materials (e.g., humanities) subsidizing the costs for more expensive disciplines (e.g., STEM areas). The electronic nature of inclusive access materials can also present issues. Electronic texts that require internet access may present problems for students who don’t have a reliable internet connection, which can be an issue especially for students from marginalized and/or rural communities, thereby further widening the digital divide. The electronic access included in inclusive access materials is also temporary, meaning that students who wish to use the same text for a future class or for their own further reference may be unable to do so. Inclusive access programs can also allow for the invisible collection of user data,2 depending on the contract between the materials broker and the school. Another significant cause for concern is students’ ability to opt out of these programs. While inclusive access programs do theoretically offer the option for students to opt out (and thereby not be charged for the course materials), the process for doing so may present several hurdles. Not only can the process for opting out be multi-step, difficult to find, and/or subject to short or unspecified deadlines, but the inclusive access materials may include ancillary materials such as assignments and assessments, meaning that students effectively have no way to pass the class if they do manage to complete the opt out process. In theory, students have the ability to opt out of the program, but in practice, doing so may effectively be opting out of the chance to succeed in the class.3
However, inclusive access also presents several causes for concern to those interested in textbook affordability. For one thing, adding the textbook costs to tuition and fees does simplify the process, but it also makes it easier for students to overlook those costs, thereby adding to their overall student debt without necessarily realizing it. In our experience, inclusive access programs can also disincentivize instructors to investigate
In the case of “inclusive access,” libraries may be unable to purchase copies of the required texts. Students are also locked out of other cost-savings measures, such as sharing a textbook, trading used books, or buying a copy used or from a different source. In theory, this option costs the students less than the “traditional” publishing model, but since all of the prices are controlled directly by the publishers, their incentives for keeping those costs low are dubious. Indeed, these programs often make it difficult to measure cost savings in the absence of a one-toone comparison of what the prices of materials would be if the program were not available. In addition, since this contravenes the spirit of the Higher Education Opportunities Act of 20084 (and in cases where the book information and price of the text are not available from the course catalog, appears to violate the letter of the law as well), institutions that are considering adopting
12 Against the Grain / December 2023 - January 2024
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