Librarians Discuss Textbook Affordability as an Equity Issue

Librarians working in academic settings have taken different stances on providing access to materials assigned in courses. Although libraries have long offered course reserves, adding course-assigned materials to permanent library collections has been discouraged for a variety of reasons. A number of events and considerations—including COVID-19 campus shutdowns, growing online degree programs, increased support for student success, availability of open educational resources (OER), and new e-books licensing models that support multiple users—have made library provisioning of assigned materials, commonly referred to as textbooks, more mainstream. Despite differences in their scope, approach, and workflows, many library-led textbook affordability programs share the common goal of promoting equity.