2019 Charleston Library Conference

Open textbooks — often published digitally through an institutional repository — can offer significant cost savings for students while offering faculty the opportunity to tailor materials to their syllabi and pedagogical practices. These textbooks present new opportunities for faculty to publish nontraditional or niche texts for use in their own classrooms as well as making them available to a global audience.

Crafting a successful open textbook initiative requires a knowledge of the textbook market as a whole and the understanding of, and access to, the on-campus disciplines most eager and capable of participating. Librarians must also think strategically about how an open textbook program serves the goals of the institution, whether public or private, and how to staff such a program. The digital platform ensures online discoverability for the resulting textbooks as well as usage statistics to continue marketing efforts for ongoing programs, demonstrating the benefits to faculty of sharing their work online and the cost savings for students, as readership grows over time. Two panelists will each present how they support, promote and sustain open textbook initiatives on their campuses. Michele Gibney, Head of Publishing and Scholarship Support at the University of the Pacific, will describe their open textbook grant program, now in its third year. Karen Bjork, Head of Digital Initiatives at Portland State University, will share her experience of running the Library’s open textbook grant and publishing program, PDXOpen. A Q&A will follow.