Textbook Affordability Options: Assessing E-book Purchase Models for Value and Impact

The Growing Momentum of Textbook Affordability Efforts Textbook affordability (TA) is gaining momentum in academia.University libraries are well positioned to leverage their online books acquisitions to initiate and support TA efforts.However, library e-books are acquired with a variety of purchase models on different platforms with differing digital rights management (DRM) restrictions, simultaneous user (SU) limits, and user interfaces.Currently, libraries make best guesses about best practices for e-book acquisitions for books that might be used as textbooks.This paper describes efforts by the University of Central Florida (UCF) Libraries' acquisitions department to establish quantitative and qualitative data to inform library e-book acquisitions in support of TA efforts.For years, the standard policy in the UCF acquisitions department prohibited buying textbooks.UCF has over 68,000 students, 101 bachelor's, 88 master's, and 29 research doctorates. 1 Our budget cannot sustain the cost of purchasing print or single-use online textbooks in quantities to support demand.We determined that we could better support teaching and learning missions by putting limited funds towards non-textbook material.However, several factors prompted us to reconsider our textbook policy.First, our e-book collection has grown to considerable size and contains many titles suitable for use as textbooks with unlimited simultaneous users.Second, UCF is large, with approximately 68,000 students enrolled, and is very active in online learning, with 38% of the credit hours coming from online courses.Because they can support online and distributed use, and multiple simultaneous use, e-books have the potential to be a good fit for supporting TA.Finally, Section 1004.085 of the Florida Statutes 2 and Rule 6A-14.092 3 both pushed colleges and universities to make college more affordable to their students, and specifically included language about textbook affordability.These mandates were, of course, unfunded, so the library had to be strategic and creative about supporting TA efforts. Previous Textbook Affordability and E-book ProjectsThe interest in textbook affordability spanned many library departments, inspiring projects and collaborations in many units, including Public Services, Scholarly Communications, the Center for Distributed Learning, and Acquisitions.The focus for Acquisitions has been on using library-acquired books to reduce textbook expenses for students.In 2016, we were granted access to the bookstore's list of assigned textbooks for the first time.We identified assigned titles that were already owned as e-books with favorable digital rights models (DRM)."Favorable," in this case, meant unlimited simultaneous usage (SU) or nonlinear lending, and the ability to download either the entire book, or chapters.We calculated a potential savings to students by multiplying the bookstore's list price per book with the enrollment for the course using the textbook and multiplying the result by three-an estimate of the number of semesters the book would be used.The total potential savings exceeded $800,000 over three semesters.We calculated a return on investment (ROI) by dividing the total potential savings by the sum of the library's spend on the identified books.