Dozens of liberal arts colleges come together to form Lever Press, a book publishing imprint that promises to be open access for both authors and readers.

What solutions might we find within our community to solve the problem of rising textbook prices? In our latest issue brief, Nancy Maron, Ithaka S+R’s Program Director for Sustainability and Scholarly Communications, looks at recent trends in textbook publishing and suggests that collaborations between university presses and academic libraries might yield a new breed of textbook more aligned to the needs of faculty and students.

Fed up with academic textbooks making constant but minor updates, adding unnecessary chapters and providing unwanted worksheets, Scott Roberts was desperate for a new way to teach his PSYC 100: Introduction to Psychology class.

As the cost of higher education skyrockets, the price of textbooks has increased at an even faster clip. According to the American Enterprise Institute, the cost of textbooks in 2012 was 812 percen...

"“What we are trying to do is create a niche: affordable learning that is high-quality and academic-friendly,” said Cyril Oberlander, who as director of the State University College at Geneseo’s Milne Library has coordinated this initiative."

"The Open SUNY Textbook Program will produce fifteen free online textbooks this year, thanks to the support from a SUNY Innovative Instruction Technology Grant (IITG) and library funding, as well as the time, skills, and talents of librarians with consultation by SUNY Press."

INTRODUCTION This article describes a joint open textbook publishing initiative begun in 2013 between Oregon State University (OSU) Libraries and Press and the Open Educational Resources and Emerging Technologies unit of Oregon State University’s Extended Campus. DESCRIPTION OF PROGRAM This initiative combines the Open Access values and project management resources of OSU Libraries, the book production (peer review, editing, design, marketing) expertise of OSU Press, and the technological development skills of the Open Educational Resources and Emerging Technologies unit. Authored by OSU faculty and focused across some of the University’s signature areas, the initiative seeks to establish a sustainable model for research libraries and university presses to collaborate with each other and other partners to publish open textbooks that will benefit students on both economic and educational levels. The article analyzes how open textbooks fit within the emerging library publishing movement, examines the implementation of the OSU open textbook publishing initiative, and conveys some lessons learned for other libraries to consider as they entertain the possibility of similar collaborations. NEXT STEPS A description of next steps includes tracking course adoptions of the textbooks as well as establishing sustainable digital publishing platforms and business models.

Oregon State University (OSU) is helping faculty produce their own open access textbooks for courses. The university press, an arm of the OSU libraries, is starting work on a series of open source e-textbooks that officials hope will ease the rising textbook costs that are a consistent cause of student complaints. To make the etextbook program work, the library and press are partnering with OSU’s Ecampus program, which administers distance and online learning programs for the college.

"State University of New York libraries are collaborating with SUNY faculty on innovative publishing initiatives to develop free online textbooks through the Open SUNY Textbook Program, a new academic- friendly publishing model."