Hello
I have been following the work OhioLINK project with interest not least in that I firmly and passionately believe in the validity the main tenet of the argument “that librarians can play a large role in negotiating arrangements with the large college publishers”
This has benefits for the library but more importantly for our students and our teaching faculty. This has driven the work at a number of UK university libraries where these negotiations and subsequent supply have taken place in recent years.
This is not to say that Open textbooks and wider OER provision does not have a potential important role to play or indeed that it has many merits, but it is not there yet on a number of levels and we need to deal with the here and now, where both the demand for textbooks from our students is great and the pedagogical options digital textbooks offer can act as tangible symbol of our central role in teaching & learning at our institutions.
I look forward to seeing and reading about further developments from our American cousins in this area. I believe that the more libraries engage directly in this area the more we will be able to both leverage price and product discussions.
Best wishes
Dominic
Dominic Broadhurst|Academic Engagement Manager|University of Manchester Library|University of Manchester|email: [log in to unmask] |tel: 0161 275 6499
ORCID ID
Read my recent journal article
The direct library supply of individual textbooks to students: examining the value proposition
https://doi.org/10.1108/ILS-07-2017-0072
From: JJE Esposito <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2018 13:59:09 -0400
Gwen Evans, the Executive Director of OhioLINK, has a guest post on the Scholarly Kitchen concerning the role of libraries in provisioning lower-priced textbooks to college students. This is a two-part post; the second part will be published Wednesday. The argument is that librarians can play a large role in negotiating arrangements with the large college publishers. The OhioLINK project has already produced tangible results to a very grateful group of undergraduates across the state. Disclosure: OhioLINK is a client and our group advised on this project. Here is the link: