From: "Elizabeth E. Kirk" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 14 May 2014 12:13:32 +0000

As a librarian and a former adjunct faculty (in a discipline other
than library science), I've had many opportunities to see how
commercial publishers work with faculty.

As an adjunct, I'd get flyers and e-mails from publishers for all
kinds of course-related materials--textbooks, software, etc. Price was
not mentioned. Free examination copies were always available to me.
"New" editions came out regularly, some with minor or completely
indiscernible differences from the previous edition. The cost to a
student of the most reasonable of the textbooks that I reviewed was
about 1.5 times the cost of a similar monograph sold to a library
(retail, not discount price). I did not use online additional
materials offered by publishers--I created my own, as that was
directly related to the topic of the course (technology in adult and
higher education). The university that employed me did not specify
what materials I was to use, nor did they for adjuncts in other
disciplines. It was up to me to choose.

As a collections officer in a research library, I often hear
complaints from librarians about publisher reps who drop in on faculty
(without advance notice and without speaking with subject librarians
first) to tell them about new resources that the library should
buy--always without mentioning price. Ironically, in light of this
conversation, I just had correspondence with such an enterprising
gentleman on Monday. I quote from his reply to my asking if he named
the price of the extremely expensive database he was peddling:

"Since I'm not involved in actual sales, I don't always know what the
pricing is for any given university or college. I do know that it is a
significant investment and, when asked, do tell faculty exactly that.
I'm not sure individual faculty always have an understanding of how a
resource like [name of database], which has application across the
social sciences, would be valued by their library."

"I'm not involved in actual sales"? I hear the laughter of many
readers. No, and were you an accountant who just did the books for the
Mafia, that doesn't make you a Mafioso, does it? You had no idea that
Mr. Gotti had any revenue streams other than a fabulously successful
laundromat.

Some faculty do not pay attention to price. There is no excuse for
this, as they certainly pay attention to the prices they pay for
services and goods in their personal lives.

At least some publishers--not Sandy, clearly--prey on this. It is a
collusion of the willing. Students and libraries pay for that.


Elizabeth E. Kirk
Associate Librarian for Information Resources
Dartmouth College Library
6025 Baker Library, Rm. 115
Hanover, NH, USA
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-----Original Message-----

From: "Hoon, Peggy" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 13 May 2014 13:09:32 +0000

Seriously?

The choice before was - NOT to buy the book.  Even the feds have
recognized that "college textbook prices have risen at twice the rate
of annual inflation over the last two decades and that new textbook
prices increased 82 percent over the last decade.² [from the LOW COST
act of 2014).

Studies have, for years, shown that students are opting not to buy the
brand new required text - but these models prevent such an opt-out.
See "7 in 10 Students Have Skipped Buying a Textbook Because of Its
Cost, Survey Finds By Molly Redden

For many students and their families, scraping together the money to
pay for college is a big enough hurdle on its own. But a new survey
has found that, once on a campus, many students are unwilling or
unable to come up with more money to buy books - one of the very
things that helps turn tuition dollars into academic success.

In the survey, <http://www.studentpirgs.org/uploads/78/e7/78e7088fe09aae620c6db5a3329b37ab/2011-textbook-survey.pdf>
released on Tuesday by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, a
nonprofit consumer-advocacy organization, seven in 10 college students
said they had not purchased a textbook at least once because they had
found the price too high. Many more respondents said they had
purchased a book whose price was driven up by common
textbook-publishing practices, such as frequent new editions or
bundling with other products.² at

<http://chronicle.com/article/7-in-10-Students-Have-Skipped/128785/>

You are correct that the faculty need some education; additionally,
their administrations need to become aware of this practice as it is,
in practical effect, a back-door mandatory student fee that improperly
jumps over university policy and procedures required when imposing any
new mandatory new student fee or increase in tuition.

Regards,

Peggy

Peggy E. Hoon, J.D.
Scholarly Communications Librarian
J. Murrey Atkins Library
University of North Carolina at Charlotte
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