"Blazing the AT: Discovering Affordable Textbooks" and "Textbook Justice League: Building a Library Textbook Affordability Brand" Recording

This session will feature two lively discussions on the topic of affordable textbooks:

1. Blazing the AT: Discovering Affordable Textbooks

Oh, the places our students could go if only they could afford to purchase all their textbooks. Textbook costs for students are a concern for many institutions and libraries have earnestly been searching for opportunities and ways to minimize the cost for students while providing access to them.

Western Carolina University in coordination with their bookstore has been providing a book rental program to its undergraduate students, funded through semester fees which includes one rental book per course number per semester. The future of the Book Rental program at WCU may be at risk, and librarians at WCU want to help our students by providing access to supplemental textbooks. In this session, librarians at WCU would like to share practical information on strategies we took to discover supplemental textbooks the library and its partners had access to such as using MatchMarc and GOBI to discover holdings in our collection and working with publishers to obtain instructor copies. We will also discuss ways we shared this with our faculty.

With the current interest in the skyrocketing costs of textbooks, we think this session would be a good one for the Lively Discussions. After the presentation, we would like to hear from participants about steps they've taken as a library to help address textbook access and affordability.

2. Textbook Justice League: Building a Library Textbook Affordability Brand

Library textbook affordability leaders can derive important perspectives by assessing their program's brand for its ability to drive stakeholder value. While brands are very difficult to quantify, measure, and evaluate—they nevertheless exert a powerful influence on your campus's stakeholders. The process of building a textbook affordability brand goes beyond logos and visuals. Your brand should foster strong intangible and emotional associations with your program.

In this session, we will share brand strategy and identity principles for developing a library textbook affordability brand. Our institution’s program has been nationally recognized by the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) via the prestigious Excellence in Academic Libraries Award.

This session will include an overview on our institutional context; brand strategy and identity principles; and powerful implementation examples that are low-cost and time-efficient.

This session will feature two lively discussions on the topic of affordable textbooks:

1. Blazing the AT: Discovering Affordable Textbooks

Oh, the places our students could go if only they could afford to purchase all their textbooks. Textbook costs for students are a concern for many institutions and libraries have earnestly been searching for opportunities and ways to minimize the cost for students while providing access to them.

Western Carolina University in coordination with their bookstore has been providing a book rental program to its undergraduate students, funded through semester fees which includes one rental book per course number per semester. The future of the Book Rental program at WCU may be at risk, and librarians at WCU want to help our students by providing access to supplemental textbooks. In this session, librarians at WCU would like to share practical information on strategies we took to discover supplemental textbooks the library and its partners had access to such as using MatchMarc and GOBI to discover holdings in our collection and working with publishers to obtain instructor copies. We will also discuss ways we shared this with our faculty.

With the current interest in the skyrocketing costs of textbooks, we think this session would be a good one for the Lively Discussions. After the presentation, we would like to hear from participants about steps they've taken as a library to help address textbook access and affordability.

2. Textbook Justice League: Building a Library Textbook Affordability Brand

Library textbook affordability leaders can derive important perspectives by assessing their program's brand for its ability to drive stakeholder value. While brands are very difficult to quantify, measure, and evaluate—they nevertheless exert a powerful influence on your campus's stakeholders. The process of building a textbook affordability brand goes beyond logos and visuals. Your brand should foster strong intangible and emotional associations with your program.

In this session, we will share brand strategy and identity principles for developing a library textbook affordability brand. Our institution’s program has been nationally recognized by the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) via the prestigious Excellence in Academic Libraries Award.

This session will include an overview on our institutional context; brand strategy and identity principles; and powerful implementation examples that are low-cost and time-efficient.