This page provides links to news on developments related to college textbooks, as well as academic articles that analyze the textbook problem and various solutions.
Attack of the wallet killers: Students cannot afford exorbitantly-priced coursepacks, (February 18, 2005). Harvard Crimson. Retrieved from http://www.thecrimson.com/
Marini Davis, L. & Usry M. (2011). Faculty selling desk copies—the textbook industry, the law and the ethics, Journal of Academic Ethics, 9(1), 19-31. Link for non-EMU users.
Senack, E. & U.S.PIRG. (2014). Fixing the Broken Textbook Market: How Students Respond to High Textbook Costs and Demand Alternatives, Center for Public Interest Research. Retrieved from http://uspirg.org
Stone, J. (September 19, 2014) Pirate Bay goes to college: Free textbook torrent downloads soar amid rising costs, International Business Times. Retrieved from http://www.ibtimes.com
Cushing, T. (Sep 23 2014). Study Indicates College Textbook Piracy Is On The Rise, But Fails To Call Out Publishers For Skyrocketing Prices (blog post), TechDirt. Retrieved from https://www.techdirt.com/
Electronic Frontier Foundation. (May 9, 2014). Textbook publisher in U.S. insists students cannot keep or resell books. Retrieved from http://www.ifex.org/united_states/2014/05/09/first_sale/
Ward, D. (September 8, 2015). Why you ought to think twice before assigning a pricey textbook, The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved from http://chronicle.com/
Young, J. R. (September 3, 2012). With 'access codes,' textbook pricing gets more complicated than ever. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved from http://chronicle.com/
Meinke, B. (March 22, 2018). Student data harvested by education publishers: they haz more than u think. Blog post retrieved from https://medium.com/@billymeinke/
Meinke, B. (March 27, 2018). Signing students up for surveillance: Textbook publisher terms of use for data. Blog post retrieved from https://medium.com/@billymeinke/
Bowers, P. (Feb 1, 2019). Textbook ‘scam’ alleged in federal lawsuit against SC’s biggest technical college, Post and Courier. Retrieved from https://www.postandcourier.com
Douglas-Gabriel, D. (April 14, 2018). Battle over college course material is a textbook example of technological change, Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com
Who is best suited to control textbooks: the faculty or the publishers? There are ways to make sure it is the faculty. Editorial in AAUP's Academe.
Moxley, J. (2013). Open textbook publishing. Academe, 99 (5). http://www.aaup.org/reports-and-publications/academe
American Mathematical Society Editorial Board. (2013). What we are doing about the high cost of textbooks, Notices of the AMS 60 (7). Retrieved from http://www.ams.org/
U.S. PIRG Education Fund and the Student PIRGs. (7 April 2014). Affordable Textbooks: A Policy Guide. http://uspirg.org/reports/usp/affordable-textbooks-policy-guide
D. Nicholas, I. Rowlands, & H.R. Jamali. (2010). "E-textbook use, information seeking behaviour and
its impact: Case study business and management," Journal of Information Science, 36 (2), 263-280.
Morris-Babb, M. & Henderson, S. (2012). An experiment in open-access textbook publishing: changing the world one textbook at a time, Journal of Scholarly Publishing, 43(2), 148-155. doi: 10.3138/jsp.43.2.148
Link for non-EMU users: article at Project Muse
Gatti, R. & Mierowsky, M. (2016). Funding open access monographs: a coalition of libraries and publishers, College & Research Libraries News, 77 (9), 456-459.
Wexler, E. (February 9, 2017). A growing (but controversial) idea in open-access textbooks: let students help write them, EdSurge News. Retrieved from https://www.edsurge.com/
Fischer, L., Hilton, J., Robinson, J. & Wiley, D.A. (2015). A multi-institutional study of the impact of open textbook adoption on the learning outcomes of post-secondary students.” Journal of Computing in Higher Education 27(3), 159–172.
Carey, K. (20 Dec 2012). Never pay sticker price for a textbook again: The open educational resources movement that’s terrifying publishers. Slate.com. Retrieved from http://www.slate.com
Petrides, L., Jimes, C., Middleton‐Detzner, C., Walling, J. & Weiss, S. (2011). Open textbook adoption and use: implications for teachers and learners. Open Learning: The Journal of Open, Distance and e-Learning, 2 (1). doi: /10.1080/02680513.2011.538563
Senack, E. (2015). Open textbooks: the billion dollar solution. Washington, DC: Center for Public Interest Research. Retrieved from http://www.studentpirgs.org/
Hilton, J. L. III, Robinson, T.J., Wiley, D. & Ackerman, J. D. (2014). Cost-savings achieved in two semesters through the adoption of open educational resources, The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 15(2), 67-84. Retrieved from http://www.irrodl.org/
Nusbaum, A. T. & Cutter, C. (2020). Hidden impacts of OER: Effects of OER on instructor ratings and course selection. Fontiers in Education, 5 (72). doi: 10.19173/irrodl.v18i4.3118
Colvard, N., Watson, E., and Park, H. (2018). “The Impact of Open Educational Resources on Various Student Success Metrics.” International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education.
Pittsley, K. (2016) Making a Dent in the Textbook Problem: Library E-Books for Course Readings: A Collaboration Between Department Faculty and the EMU Library, Final Report EMU Women in Philanthropy Grant.
Fischer, L., Hilton III, J., Robinson, T. J., & Wiley, D. A. (2015). A multi-institutional study of the impact of open textbook adoption on the learning outcomes of post-secondary students. Journal of Computing in Higher Education. doi:10.1007/s12528-015-9101-x
This large scale project showed that students earned more credits when a college offered many courses using OER. All students benefit, and it makes the biggest difference for Pell Grant students. The financial benefit to the College from increased credits was expected to exceed costs of the program.
Hilton, J. & Laman, C. (2012). One college’s use of an open psychology textbook. Open Learning: The Journal of Open, Distance and eLearning, 27(3). doi: 10.1080/02680513.2012.716657
Hilton, J. (2016). Open educational resources and college textbook choices: A review of research on efficacy and perceptions. Educational Technology Research and Development, 64(4), 573-590.
Anderson, R. (July 7, 2016). Academic libraries and the textbook taboo: time to get over it?, The Scholarly Kitchen, [web log post]. Retrieved from https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/
K. Pittsley (2014). The EMU Library tackles the textbook problem, FacultyConnections@EMULibrary, 2 (1). Retrieved from https://guides.emich.edu/facconnect
Ratto, B. G., & Lynch, A. (2012). The embedded textbook: Collaborating with faculty to employ library subscription E-books as core course text. Journal of Electronic Resources Librarianship, 24(1), 1-16.
Lyons, C. & , Hendrix, D. (2014) Textbook affordability: Is there a role
for the library?, The Serials Librarian 66 (1-4). 262-267, doi: 10.1080/0361526X.2014.877282
Raschke, G. & Shanks, S. (2011) Water on a hot skillet: textbooks, open educational resources, and the role of the library. Library Technology Reports 47(8), 52+.
Young, J.R. (Jan 4, 2018). As campuses move to embrace OER, college libraries become key players, EdSurge News. Retrieved from https://www.edsurge.com/
Berry, T., Cook, L., Hill, N. & Stevens, K. (2010). An exploratory analysis of textbook usage and study habits: misperceptions and barriers to success, College Teaching, 59(1), 31-39. doi: 10.1080/87567555.2010.509376
Karaganis, J. (FEBRUARY 18, 2016). How a ‘Syllabus Commons’ could change higher education. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved from http://chronicle.com/
Snyder, R. (2014). Let's burn them all: reflections on the learning-inhibitory nature of Introduction to Management and Introduction to Organizational Behavior textbooks, Journal of Management Education, 38(5), 733-758. doi: 10.1177/1052562913502481
Williams, C. (January 21, 2017) Pearson fights for its future as investors consider a break-up, The Telegraph. Retrieved from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/
Czerniewicz, L. (2016). Student practices in copyright culture: accessing learning resources, Learning, Media And Technology. doi: 10.1080/17439884.2016.1160928
McMahan, C. (2013). Theory and evidence of switching costs in the market for college textbooks (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from http://scholar.colorado.edu
Hurley, P. M. (2011). Book vouchers: an exploratory analysis of their use and effectiveness," Journal of Student Financial Aid, 41 (3). Retrieved from http://publications.nasfaa.org/jsfa/
O'Malley, S. (August 16, 2017). Which is better reading in print or on screen? ‘There’s no easy answer.’ Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved from https://www.insidehighered.com
Johnson, S. (April 12, 2018). Can a for-profit, venture-backed company keep OER free—and be financially sustainable?, EdSurge News. Retrieved from https://www.edsurge.com/
This video of a 2017 keynote presentation at Lansing Community Colleges is one of the best talks on OER that I've seen.
Dr. Cable Green is the Director of Open Education at Creative Commons. Don't let the initial focus on community colleges deter you, this is very relevant for universities too.