Reducing the cost of course materials provides an equitable opportunity for all students to succeed.
Students continue to skip buying assigned textbooks despite concerns that it will affect their grade: In 2020, 65 percent of students surveyed reported skipping buying a textbook because of cost; 63 percent skipped purchasing one during the same period the previous year.
More students are skipping access codes during the pandemic: Forgoing an access code means students miss out on homework, quizzes, and other important parts of their grade in a class.
Food insecure students skip buying course materials at a significantly higher rate: The percentage of food insecure students who skipped access codes is nearly twice the national average, and an unacceptable barrier for students who already face huge challenges to completing their degree.
Taken from Fixing the Broken Textbook Market: Third Edition by US PIRG Education Fund licensed under CC BY 4.0
The library can license eBooks from different publishers. If the book is on the textbook list that is sent to the bookstore, we will automatically purchase it if it is available as an unlimited user option. You can check the library catalog to see if we have the title available. Contact reserves@purdue.edu if you are interested in seeing if an ebook is available for the library to license. Keep in mind, that not all publishers allow libraries to license the books and not all publishers allow unlimited user access.
There are a lot of good-quality OA books with free access. You can search the library catalog for items or you can check out the list of OA book repositories on the Finding OERs page. If you know of an OA book that you don't see in the Purdue Libraries catalog, contact reserves@purdue.edu and we can work on getting that title added.
There are many OA or Library-Licensed articles that can be useful for different sections of the course and can replace a conventional textbook that might have been used with the course. You can create a Library Reading List to compile these resources. The Library Reading List tool integrates into Brightpsace and you have the ability to reuse that reading list each time you teach the class. Contact reserves@purdue.edu if you have questions or need assistance with that tool.
Purdue Libraries Statement on Commercial Textbooks in the Purdue Libraries Collection
The ebooks that we license for courses tend to be unlimited user or DRM free. This means that everyone with a Purdue Login can access the title and if the title is DRM free, there are no restrictions on downloading the material as a PDF.
If the item is not free of Digital Rights Management (DRM), then there will be limitations on the number of pages that can be downloaded or printed.
Other ebook options available for libraries to license are single a user access ebooks. This means that titles can only be accessed by one person at a time. We can usually turn off third-party download options (i.e. only able to download to software like Adobe Digital Editions) at your request. This will allow the students to access the book one at a time on a web browser and the student will need to sign out or close their web browser before the next person can access the book. There are limitations on the number of pages that can be downloaded as a PDF or printed.
This is similar to single user access but there are three copies available so three people can access the book at a time. There are limitations on the number of pages that can be downloaded as a PDF or printed.
*We don't usually recommend licensing single user or three user access ebooks because students tend to get frustrated when they can't access the book when they need it.
