Top Textbooks in Review: Considering a Decade’s Worth of a Textbook Affordability Program

By Jennifer E. M. Cotton (University of Maryland, College Park Libraries) <jecotton@umd.edu>

Introduction

The Top Textbooks on Reserve program at the University of Maryland, College Park (UMD) Libraries began almost a decade ago as a way for the UMD Libraries to provide immediate and direct assistance to students struggling with the high costs of their required course materials. Though the Top Textbooks program has faced a number of challenges in meeting this goal over that time, it continues to help students and is expanding at the present time. This article is intended to provide a review of the Top Textbooks program over the past ten years, and in particular to share some of the insights that have emerged from running it so that other libraries can benefit from the lessons learned.

Origins and Early Years

The University of Maryland, College Park serves over 40,700 students in 12 different schools and colleges, with 104 undergrad majors, 115 master’s programs, and 84 doctoral programs.1 The University of Maryland Libraries consists of eight branches, each of which manages its own hardcopy reserves, with centralized electronic and streaming media reserves services located in the main McKeldin Library, along with the Top Textbooks on Reserves program. All of the reserves services operated out of the McKeldin Library are part of the Resource Sharing and Reserves (RSR) unit in the User Services and Resource Sharing department.

Since the origins and early years of the Top Textbooks program (along with workflows and criteria for title selection) have already been described at more length in a previous article,2 this discussion will focus primarily on the program during and following the Covid-19 pandemic, and efforts to rebuild and expand the Top Textbooks in its wake. In brief, the Top Textbooks program originated in early 2014, out of conversations among members of the Student Government Association (SGA) and staff and upper administration of the UMD Libraries about the issues surrounding textbook affordability, and what the Libraries could do to help students. Though the specifics have shifted some over the years, the fundamental idea of the Top Textbooks program remains that the Libraries identify some of the largest (highest enrollment) courses on campus for which we can provide the required textbooks, and offer those textbooks for four-hour loans. While eBooks are included in the program when they are available to the Libraries with unlimited simultaneous user licenses, those remain rare, and the bulk of the program lies in physical books. The program began offering the textbooks for 50 courses at a single library branch during the Fall 2014 semester, expanding to approximately 100 courses starting in Fall 2015.

The Pandemic and Aftermath

In between the Fall 2014 and Fall 2023 semesters lies Spring 2020, and with it the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic. During this time, the UMD campus as a whole moved first to an entirely remote model of operations, with no one entering the Libraries at all, followed by a primarily-remote model for the 2020-2021 academic year. In the initial version of the second model, a limited number of the Libraries staff were permitted into the Libraries, but book check-out was only done via curbside pickup and all materials were quarantined between users. Even once all Libraries employees and other members of the UMD community began to be permitted back inside the library, they were only allowed inside in limited numbers for restricted amounts of time up until the Fall 2021 semester.

Because the Top Textbooks program deals primarily in physical books, the program was largely suspended for the duration of the remote period. No new books were added during this time, and the existing collection was only available for chapter scanning requests. However, we did identify the instructors for the courses that might have been considered for inclusion under normal circumstances, and let them know that while the program was not currently operating, we did still have a large textbook collection, and would be glad to provide scans of portions of these works through our electronic reserves service.

As seen in Graph 1, the Covid-19 pandemic dealt a huge blow to the usage of this popular program. In addition to all of the other disruptions associated with the pandemic, we saw a large loss of institutional knowledge among the student body. We have always notified the instructors whose courses are included in the Top Textbooks that their books are available for students to check out, but we also know from anecdotal student reports that the transmission of this information to the students themselves is inconsistent at best. In addition to not coming into the libraries, the opportunities for direct word- information sharing between the students were severely diminished in an entirely virtual class environment. Many of the students who were familiar with the Top Textbooks graduated or left, and incoming students didn’t know about the program and had few ways to learn.

When the Top Textbooks returned with the return to campus in Fall 2021, we saw an 84% decrease in usage from the pre- pandemic levels in Fall 2019. Despite this, it is worth bearing in mind that even in Fall 2021, the Top Textbooks still saw 616 circulations by 253 unique borrowers, which is not an insubstantial number of students to have helped. At the time of this writing, the usage numbers have still not recovered to their previous levels, although a preliminary report at the end of October 2023 showed an increase to 918 circulations a little over halfway through the semester.

Other Challenges

The difficulties presented by the pandemic are only one segment of the challenges that the Top Textbooks program has had and continues to face. The first of these challenges has always been letting the students know that the books are available for them to use. As previously mentioned, while some instructors are very enthusiastic about the Top Textbooks program and conscientious about spreading the word to their students, others are less so, and may make only a brief mention of the program or not say anything about it to their students at all. Staff in the Libraries have no means of contacting the students enrolled in the included courses directly, so we must rely on more indirect methods, like notifying the instructors or trying to advertise the Top Textbooks more generally in campus-wide venues.

Another ongoing challenge is the difficulty posed by identifying the textbooks and courses for inclusion in the Top Textbooks in the first place. We have access to a report from the registrar which allows us to see how many seats are offered and filled for each course on campus, but there is no information about required course materials for those courses. The college bookstore has proven reluctant to provide us with any consolidated information about the course materials, meaning that in order to find out what textbooks are (or are not) required for a given course, Libraries staff must look up that course by individual sections on the bookstore website. This necessitates a great deal of staff time. Further complicating matters, the titles and ISBNs used on the bookstore website may not match those in the Libraries’ catalog and, in recent years, we have seen several instances where the bookstore’s website was malfunctioning intermittently or entirely for extended periods.

The other significant barrier for the Top Textbooks program is courses that require materials that the Libraries cannot acquire or provide. These include rental-only textbooks, single-user eBook access codes, and First DayTM (“inclusive access”) materials.3 As seen in Graph 2, the combined percentage of the courses evaluated for Top Textbooks that require materials which are unavailable to the UMD Libraries for purchase has been trending upward over time, particularly in the years since the pandemic suspension. See Graph 2 located below.

Rebuilding and Expanding

Despite the challenges, the UMD Libraries remain committed to textbook affordability, and the Libraries’ Administrative Leadership Team (ALT) has supported not only rebuilding but also expanding the Top Textbooks on Reserve program. This has included funding a new contingent staff position for a textbook reserves specialist, whose work is focused on the Top Textbooks program. Having someone in this dedicated position has allowed us to expand the program in ways that would have been untenable otherwise, including by expanding the number of courses included from approximately 100 to over 150 and offering copies of the required texts for 25 STEM-related courses at the STEM Library branch.

We have also worked to expand the discoverability of the Top Textbooks. We have worked with our Cataloging and Metadata Services department to get all of the Top Textbooks into the Libraries’ catalog so that they can be found using a typical title search. (For a variety of historical reasons, the Top Textbooks had previously been part of a suppressed collection with temporary circulation records only. They could be searched for via a separate database on the Libraries’ website.) In addition, we have worked with members of the Digital Services and Technology division to add not only the titles but the course numbers for Top Textbooks courses into the Libraries’ website’s Bento search function, meaning that students can find their materials by course as well as by title, author, or ISBN. As of October 17th, 2023, the Top Textbooks search page was the seventh most popular page on the Libraries’ website.

Lessons Learned

Outreach Needs to Be Perpetual, Mutual, and Multi-Pronged

We have learned a number of useful lessons from running this program over the years. The first of these is about outreach, since having textbooks on our shelves is of no value if the students who would use them don’t know about them. Outreach needs to be perpetual, especially in a university setting, where the student body is constantly turning over. Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, we found that marketing the program to students was something that needed to be done every year, especially since so many of the largest courses (i.e., the ones most likely to be included in the Top Textbooks program) are introductory level and especially likely to be taken by incoming students.

Outreach also can and should be undertaken as a mutually supportive endeavor with other groups whose goals align with those of the program. Though Open Educational Resources (OERs) are sometimes regarded as being in opposition to Course Reserves, in fact they can work very well in conjunction. We are very fortunate at the UMD Libraries to have librarians in our Research, Teaching and Learning department (where the Libraries’ OER work is centered) who also recognize this, and work with us to cross-promote all of the textbook affordability efforts that the Libraries supports, as do our subject liaison librarians.

In the case of something like the Top Textbooks program, it is also important to make sure that outreach is multi-pronged. In addition to the students, we also want to inform and build strong relationships with the instructors. Beyond that, we work to make sure that the subject liaison librarians are familiar with the program (including which courses from their disciplines areas are included), so that they can promote it to the instructors they work with, and also communicate ideas and issues raised by those instructors back to us. Outreach to the Libraries’ upper administration is also key. The continued, and even expanded, work of the Top Textbooks program is only possible through their support, so it is vital that we communicate the value of the program to them. The members of ALT are then also able to share that information with other campus upper administrators and beyond as evidence of the UMD Libraries’ commitment to textbook and educational affordability. The Top Textbooks program was mentioned by name in the ACRL Excellence in Academic Libraries Award for 2020 which the UMD Libraries received.4 Outreach and information exchange with others in the field is also valuable, as we have learned from the experiences of other institutions as well as sharing our own, including with George Washington University, whose Top Textbooks program is partially modeled on UMD’s program.5

Collaboration is Key

Collaboration is key to dealing with all of the challenges identified previously, and almost all of the work done on the Top Textbooks program represents a collaboration between RSR and one or more other groups. Outside of the Libraries, we collaborate regularly with the SGA, who has provided financial support, assistance in publicizing the program as well as our annual spring Top Textbooks donation drive, and communicates student perspectives to us. The department of Resident Life is also a key partner in the spring donation drive, allowing donation bins in the dorms and encouraging students to donate textbooks they no longer need to support the Top Textbooks program. We even have a limited partnership with the campus bookstore, in which they have allowed us to use the UMD staff discount and to have access to the textbooks section of the store before it has opened to the public for the semester.

Within the UMD Libraries, the Top Textbooks program directly involves almost every division. In addition to previously mentioned work with the subject liaison librarians and the Research, Teaching and Learning department, we collaborate regularly with the Strategic Communications and Outreach Team and Student Engagement Services to promote the Top Textbooks through campus advertising, social media, and Libraries events.

On the internally-facing side, we work with members of the Digital Services and Technology division and now the Cataloging and Metadata Services department to make the Top Textbooks findable on the Libraries’ website. We also have extensive support from other members of the Collection Services and Strategies division in doing the initial identification of textbooks for inclusion as well as in the acquisition of new materials. We work with our Preservation department to bind any loose-leaf textbooks and to repair books that become damaged with use. As of the Fall 2023 semester, we also collaborate with members of the STEM Library branch on making Top Textbooks available at that location as well.

The Importance of Being Adaptable

Adaptability is another necessary quality for a program like the Top Textbooks. The surrounding circumstances can and will change over time, in both more negative ways (e.g., global pandemic, the rise of rental-only textbooks) and more positive ones (increasing the number of courses served, expanding to a second library branch). Continuing the Top Textbooks over a number of years has required ongoing adaptation, and a willingness to constantly evaluate what is working well and what could be improved.

We are always thinking about future directions of the program as well. One of our current goals is to investigate the feasibility of offering Controlled Digital Lending (CDL) for Course Reserves, starting with the Top Textbooks program. If we do end up moving to this model, it will require an enormous shift in the way we operate the program, but we are willing to undertake this change if we determine that it would be feasible and beneficial. We must adapt to both circumstances outside of our control and those that are more subject to our decision-making. In our experience, the best practice is to maintain a focus on the core goals (in this case, providing students with access to their course materials at no extra cost to them) and to adjust the procedures to match the circumstances.

Knowing Where You Are, Knowing Where You’re Going

One important feature of the Top Textbooks program from the Libraries’ perspective has always been ongoing assessment. We have kept extensive quantitative statistics from the beginning, and used them in making data-informed decisions. We look not just at overall circulation numbers but also break the data down more specifically, for instance, in determining that there is value in retaining the older editions of textbooks even when we have the newest edition (at least for a time), or that it is not worth including the courses in an online-only business degree program whose students were never on campus.

In addition to total circulation numbers, we also keep track of the number of different individual borrowers, so that we have a better understanding of how many students are using the program. We then use the number of unique borrowers multiplied by the average cost of a Top Textbooks title for the semester to calculate the maximum potential savings that the program has offered UMD students in that semester. As we have no way of knowing actual student savings, we use the maximum potential savings as a measure of the amount of money that may have been saved by students, if every student who checked out a Top Textbook would otherwise have purchased that book for full price. We use the maximum potential savings to calculate the maximum potential return on investment by subtracting the amount spent by the Libraries on materials and staff time.

An area in which our assessment has been lacking thus far is in more qualitative measures. The same circumstances which make it difficult to contact the students to let them know about the Top Textbooks make it equally difficult to contact them for feedback on the program. However, we have begun working with one of the newly-hired Teaching and Learning librarians to plan ways that we might be able to gather some of that information. We are currently discussing plans for an initial student survey followed by focus groups to help us better understand students’ perspectives on this issue, and how the Top Textbooks program can best address their needs. More qualitative data will also allow us to better understand what impact this program has on the students that we serve.

Conclusions

The overall scope of the problems with textbook affordability (and more broadly, educational affordability at large) are beyond the reach of libraries alone to solve, but that does not mean that libraries cannot make a meaningful contribution by helping students in concrete ways. Despite the challenges involved (and any claims that the internet has made libraries obsolete), our experience with the Top Textbooks on Reserve shows that it is possible to operate such a program in a way that students and the Libraries find valuable. The Covid-19 pandemic dealt a significant blow to the Top Textbooks usage, but it has still seen considerable use, and we have been working to rebuild and expand.

For any institutions considering implementing a similar program, we have some suggested best practices. First, identify all of your potential stakeholders. These include both your potential collaborators as well as those to whom you will need to target your outreach. Make sure that outreach is an integral part of your plans from the beginning. We also recommend establishing strong relationships with your collaborators, and making sure that you are all communicating regularly about anything related to the textbook program. In as much as it is possible, plan to be adaptable. It’s worth putting in the time to do some planning for both positive potential changes (e.g., if you receive extra funding for purchasing textbooks, what would be the best use of it? Adding more courses, or adding more duplicate copies?) and negative ones (e.g., if you face an unexpected staffing shortage one semester, what would be the best way to handle it? Ask another person or department for assistance, or identify ways to scale back temporarily?) Assessment is also vital in adaptation, because it can help you identify trends to which you should be responding. With any assessment, it is critical to be thoughtful about both the questions you are trying to answer and the data that you’re using to answer them. What metrics (or combination of metrics) would indicate that the program is achieving your goals, and what would tell you that change is needed? And for outreach purposes, what metrics would help you demonstrate the value of your program to those who do not directly work with it?

By focusing on outreach, collaboration, adaptation, and assessment, the Top Textbooks on Reserve program has been helping students learn for almost a decade, and to date has provided UMD students a maximum potential savings of over $1.5 million. While an eventual shift to entirely electronic course materials may someday render a program like the Top Textbooks ineffective (or require it to evolve into something significantly different), as long as the program continues to help students and to strengthen the bonds between the Libraries and the campus community, there is a place for a textbook reserves program like this one.

Endnotes

1. “Rankings and Fast Facts.” University of Maryland, Oct. 2023, http://www.umd.edu/rankings-and-fast-facts , Accessed 5 November 2023.

2. Thompson, Hilary H, and Jennifer E. M. Cotton. “Top Textbooks on Reserve: Creating, Promoting, and Assessing a Program to Help Meet Students’ Need for Affordable Textbooks.” Journal of Access Services 14, no. 2 (2017): 53–67.

3. “First Day FAQs.” University of Maryland College Park Bookstore , https://umcp.bncollege.com/first-day-faqs , Accessed 5 November 2023.

4. “2020 ACRL Excellence in Academic Libraries Recipients Award Announced.” ACRL Update, 23 Jan. 2020, https:// ala.informz.net/informzdataservice/onlineversion/ ind/bWFpbGluZ2luc3RhbmNlaWQ9OTA4MDI3OSZzd WJzY3JpYmVyaWQ9MTAwNzM4ODA5Mw==, Accessed 5 November 2023.

5. “Top Textbooks.” Libraries & Academic Innovation. https://library.gwu.edu/top-textbooks , Accessed 5 November 2023.