Poking the bear: Promoting textbook affordability in the face of a restrictive institutional environment (original) (raw)
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Librarians at East Carolina University and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro received a 2-year grant to support a combined alternative textbook project. This project engages in a two-pronged approach to reduce students' textbook costs and increase their academic engagement. One strategy is to award departmental faculty mini-grants to use materials that would have no cost to their students, including OER or library resources. The second strategy is to identify required texts that the library already owns or can purchase as unlimited-user e-books. Benefits to students include reduced costs and an increased opportunity for engagement and academic success.
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is a CLIR/DLF Data Curation fellow, associate librarian, and a full-time researcher affiliated with the Clark Library for Maps, Government Information and Data Services. Since the summer of 2012, Natsuko has been involved in developing and implementing library data services. After joining the University of Michigan Library in 2009, the majority of her time and effort has been dedicated to textbook initiatives at the University of Michigan Library. Her research orientation and knowledge of both quantitative and qualitative methodological techniques has enabled her to conduct several textbook-related studies that examine and assess a wide range of potential roles the Library can play in increasing textbook affordability for the Michigan scholarly community. Natsuko most recently served as a project manager for the campus-wide eTextbook Initiative led by the University Library.
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