Let’s Burn Them All

“Let’s Burn Them All” makes an excellent and dramatic case for eliminating textbooks as the primary source material for classroom teaching in management and organizational behavior and, by extension, similar disciplines. As a librarian, I’d like to toss a little more fuel on this fire, metaphorically of course. Academic libraries stand to gain from the conflagration in several ways. A move away from textbooks would free libraries from worrying about whether and to what extent to provide expensive textbook access to students, which has been plaguing the academic library world for years. Students who lose the idea that one book has almost everything they need to know for a course could be newly exposed to the rich array of resources that the library provides. Professors and librarians could work more closely together in creating collections that support classroom learning. And faculty could be inspired by and become involved in the Open Access movement, an outcome greatly desired by the academic library world.

Almost every university reference librarian becomes depressed when, at the opening of every semester, scores of anxious students ask, “Does the library have a copy of my textbook?” The answer will almost always be no. Most libraries have a policy of not buying them (Pollitz, Christie, & Middleton, 2009). And even when they have them, it is usually an outdated edition, or a single reserve copy whose limitations—a standard 2-hour time period in a fixed location with limited hours and a likely long wait—are far from satisfactory. The student’s expression immediately changes to disappointment, worry, or anger at the prospect of shelling out several hundred more dollars at a time when they are facing the many unanticipated costs of being in college or living in a new place. These are usually new students—often from other countries—and this is one of their earliest lessons about the library: It doesn’t have the one book that they desperately need. This is not the first impression we want to make.

That textbook costs have been dramatically increasing and are excessively high is well known. A U.S. Government report some years ago (U.S. Government Accountability Office, 2005) determined that students spent an average of $900 a year on textbooks, an amount that, considering the pressures of relentlessly rising tuitions and student debt, they can hardly afford. Very bad results follow: students try to get through the course without needed readings, they make and share illegal copies, they avoid courses simply because of textbook costs (Senack, 2014). Possibly worst of all, this exacerbates the effect of income inequality within the student body—making it harder for those with limited means to succeed, and even stay in school (Buczynski, 2007; Williams, 2013). Options are arising to save students’ money—rental, e-textbooks, used books, an aftermarket—but the cost savings are small and not always available (Allen, 2010).

As a result, student groups put pressure on their libraries—the natural place to turn when looking for books—to at least provide a copy of every required textbook on reserve (Christie, Pollitz, & Middleton, 2009). The majority of libraries have resisted that role for various reasons: diversion of considerable funds from research collections and databases, poor quality of the material, the need to constantly upgrade to new editions, staff costs for circulation and processing, space requirements, and conflict with the school bookstore (Pollitz et al., 2009). But they alienate students by doing so, and some libraries bite the bullet at least to some extent—spending limited resources on generally mediocre materials that do little to advance scholarship. A few go all the way: North Carolina State University “makes over 4500 required textbooks available on course reserves each year” (NCSU Libraries, n.d.) at a cost of $250,000 (Pollitz et al., 2009). It’s a dilemma that libraries would be glad to be rid of.

As an alternative to textbooks, the author enthusiastically recommends using a selection of readings from journals, magazines, newspapers, blogs, and websites. The author describes the increased engagement of the students in class—being more “neurologically present”—but an added attraction is a new opportunity for them to discover the library’s resources. It can take them directly into databases and electronic journal and periodical subscriptions that they would otherwise never know about (Gauder, 2013) and where they can easily go on to further explorations. This depends on how those readings are provided—if they are simply PDFs to open, they could easily go no further; but if they are links that lead into databases, online reference sources, or journal websites subscribed to by the library, like ABI/INFORM (and the host of newspapers, magazines, and journals it contains), the APA Handbook of Industrial and Organizational Psychology, the Economist, or the Academy of Management Journal. In addition to texts, library databases contain videos, data sets, audio files, archival material, and other items that are not available for free. Those connections will take students to related material and offer enticements to search for more; they will get a glimpse of the rich world beyond Google.

Another benefit would be librarian–professor collaboration, which will come as faculty work with librarians to discover and acquire licensed content that supports their courses. The costs of copyright clearance and difficulty of finding good free content can often be solved by using electronic resources bought with library licenses for university-wide use. Faculty will become more aware of what the library can and does provide—not always a given (Dewald, 2005).

That said, there are a few logistical problems with the alternative e-readings model that are worth noting. The copyright situation is still evolving, and far from crystal clear; at the same time, professors may ignore or misunderstand what they are entitled legally to post on course management systems or their websites, setting up a danger of legal action. Publishers are also getting more restrictive in what they will allow. The Association of American Publishers has aggressively pursued universities in what they saw as copyright infringements in their e-reserve systems (Dames, 2010). And now the Harvard Business School Press is requiring universities to pay thousands in supplementary fees to have the right to simply post links to its articles and even have full access to the most popular ones (which are already paid for as part of an EBSCO database). Furthermore, a number of electronic text formats are not yet fully accessible to the blind and print-disabled; a large pilot program operating at numerous universities providing electronic textbooks and course packs was recently accused by the National Federation of the Blind of violating the Americans with Disabilities Act (Schroeder, 2012). However, the situation is unfolding at light speed and will hopefully be resolved soon in a way to bring educational materials and readers closer together.

Finally, looking ahead, we may not want to write off textbooks entirely—or at least the new forms that are rapidly surfacing in response to many of the problems already discussed and the opportunities offered by new technologies. Of particular interest are the Open Textbook and Open Educational Resources (OER) phenomena, about which there is growing participation and support among faculty and students (Bell, 2013). Open textbooks are

high-quality college texts with an “open” copyright license allowing the material to be freely accessed, shared and adapted. They are typically distributed online at no cost and can be purchased in a variety of other print and digital formats at a low cost, including hard bound copies. (Student PIRGs, 2013)

Typically, they also can be legally shared, copied, and distributed. Professors can use them, adapt and add to them, or create them. The Student Public Interest Research Group is championing this movement and provides links to resources (http://studentpirgs.org/campaigns/sp/make-textbooks-affordable) that support it. OER are equally shareable and embrace the whole range of teaching materials from full courses to videogames; the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC; http://www.sparc.arl.org/issues/oer/) is an excellent place to learn more about them.

Librarians are deeply committed to all forms of open access; we can hope that once faculty, through seeking alternatives to traditional textbooks, become engaged in that pursuit, they will see its benefits with regard to all of scholarly publishing and communication. For more information, see Peter Suber’s work (http://bit.ly/oa-overview) or talk to your university librarians.

Professors, this is up to you: The textbook market is to a large extent in your hands, as you select what students must acquire to succeed in your courses. Librarians will be glad to work with you to make those selections the most “engagement-inducing,” informative, accessible, creative, and cost-effective for all concerned.